[)raise lor 1) 1'1/ hooks's

all about love

"It is a warm affirm ation th at lo ve is possible and an attack on the cul ­

ture of narcissism and sel fish ness. "

-New Yo rk Times Book Reuieu:

"A gracefully written volume . . . her treatise offers a deeply personal

and-in this age of chicken-soupy psychobabble-unabashed ly hon-

est view of relationships ." -Entertainment Weekly

"Her vision seems idealistic ... ambitious. Yet it touches a yearning

we all ha ve and is expressed so sincerely .. . . hooks's New Visions reminds us th at we can be a part of a loving community."

- Philadelphia Inquirer

"Pay attention to bel l hooks. The American w riter and cul tural critic

is becoming a household word ... hooks's writing typically inspires,

enlightens and provokes. She is an academic wild card, the brilliant

feminis t whose sharp mind can sli ce the latest schola rly shibboleth. "

-Boston Globe and Mail

"She provides a refresh ing sp iri tual treatise that steps outside the con­

fines of the intellect and into the wilds of the heart."

-Seattle Weekly

"Every page offers useful nuggets of wisdom to aid the reader in over­

coming the fears o f total intimacy and of loss .... hooks's view of

amour is ultimately a pleasing, upbeat alternative to the slew of

books that proclaim the demise of love in our cynica l time."

-Publishers Weekly

"A spiritual handbook, weighty with platitudes, yet refreshed with

some thoughtful ana lyses that offer seekers a way to explore love's

meaning, or meaningless." -Kirk us Reuiews

"A ll About Loue: N ew Vis iolls promises to be one of the most engag­

ing, life-affirming reads of the year. Come to it w ith an open mind,

and an open heart, and prepare to be transformed."

- Black Issues Book Reuiew

"Like love , this book is worth the commitment." - Toronto Sun

HARPER e PERENNIAL

A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2000 by William Morrow and Company, Inc.

ALL ABOUT LOVE. Copyright © 2000 by Gloria Watkins. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this

book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins

Publishers Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

HarperCollins books may be purchased fo r educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information please write: Special Markets

Department, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 10 East 5>rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

First Perennial edition published 2001.

Designed by Jo Anne Meisch

The Lib rary of Congress has catalogued the ha rdcover edition as

follows:

Hooks, Bell. Al! about love : new visions I Bell Hooks

p. em. ISBN 0-688-16844-2

1. Love. 2. Feminist ethics 1. Title. BF575.L8 H655 2000 99-35253

306 .7-dc21 CIP

ISBN 006-095947-9 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-06-095947-0 (pbk .)

12 RRD 30 29

the first love letter i ever wrote was sent to you. just

as this book was written to talk to you. anthony­

you have been my most intimate listener. i will love

you always .

in the song of solomon there is this passage that reads:

"i found him whom my soul loves. i held him and

would not let him go." to holding on, to knowing

again that moment of rapture, of recognition where

we can face one another as we really are, stripped of

artifice and pretense, naked and not ashamed.

Conten ts

Preface / ix

Introduction

Grace: Touched by Love / xiii

One

Clarity : Give Love Words / I

Two

Justice: Childhood Love Lessons / 15

Th ree

Honesty: Be True to Love / 3 I

Four

Commitment: Let Love Be Love in Me / 5 I

Five

Spirituality: Divine Love / 69

V I I

CO NTENTS

Six

Values: Living by a Love Ethnic / 85

Seven

Greed: Simply Love / 1 03

Eight

Community: Loving Communion / 1 27

N ine

Mutuality: The Heart of Love / 145

Ten

Romance: Sweet Love / 167

Eleven

Loss: Loving into Life and Death / 189

Twelve

Healing: Redemptive Love / 2 0 7

Thirteen

Destiny: When Angels Speak of Love / 2 23

V III

Preface

W. N I WAS achild, it was c1earto me that life

was not worth living if we did not know love. I wish I

could testify that I came to this awareness because of the

love I felt in my life . But it was love's ahsence that let me

know how much love mattered. I was my father's first

daughter. At the moment of my birth, I was looked upon

with loving kindness, cherished and made to feel wanted

on this earth and in my home. To this day I cannot re­

member when that feeling of being loved left me. I just

know that one day I was no longer precious. Those who

had initially loved me well turned away. The absence of

their recognition and regard pierced my heart and left me

with a feeling of brokenheartedness so profound I was

spellbound.

Grief and sadness overwhelmed me. I did not know

what I had done wrong. And nothing I tried made it right.

I X

PREFACE

No other connection healed the hurt of that first aban­

donment, that first banishment from love's paradise. For

years I lived my life suspended, trapped by the past, un­

able to move into the future. Like every wounded child I

just wanted to turn back time and be in that paradise

again, in that moment of remembered rapture where I felt

loved, where I felt a sense of belonging.

We can never go back. I know that now. We can go

fo rward . We can find the love our hearts long for , but not

until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when

we were little and had no voice to speak the heart's long­

ing. All the years of my life I thought I was searching for

love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was sim­

ply trying to recover what had been lost, to return to the

first home, to get back the rapture of first love. I was not

really ready to love or be loved in the present. I was still

mourning-clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to

broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was

able to love again .

I awakened from my trance state and was stunned to

find the world I was living in, the world of the present,

was no longer a world open to love. And I noticed that

all around me I heard testimony that lovelessness had be­

come the order of the day . I feel our nation's turning away

from love as intensely as I felt love's abandonment in my

girlhood. Turning away we risk moving into a wilderness

x

PREFACE

of spirit so intense we may never find our way home again .

I wri te of love to bear witness both to the danger in this

movement, and to call for a return to love. Redeemed and

restored, love returns us to the promise of everlasting life.

When we love we can let our hearts speak.

X 1

Introduction

GRACE:

TOUCHED BY LOVE

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most

ancient cultures know this . We can actually converse

with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern

life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and

thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking

time to converse with our heart.

- JACK KORNFIELD

ON MY KITCHEN wall hang four snapshots of

graffiti art I first saw on construction walls as I walked to

my teaching job at Yale University years ago. The decla­

ration, "The search for love continues even in the face of

great odds," was painted in bright colors. At the time,

recently separated from a partner of almost fifteen years,

I was often overwhelmed by grief so profound it seemed

as though an immense sea of pain was washing my heart

and soul away. Overcome by sensations of being pulled

underwater, drowning, I was constantly searching for an­

chors to keep me afloat, to pull me back safely to the

shore. The declaration on the construction walls with its

childlike drawing of unidentifiable animals always lifted

my spirits . Whenever I passed this site, the affirmation of

love's possibility sprawling across the block gave me hope.

Signed with the first name of local artist, these works

spoke to my heart. Reading them I fe lt certain the artist

x v

I!'JTRODlJCT I ON

was undergoing a crisis in his li fe, either already confront­

ing loss or facing the possibility of loss. In my head I en­

gaged in imaginary conversations about the meaning of

love with him. I told him how his playfu l graffiti art an­

chored me and helped restore my faith in love. I ta lked

about the way this declaration with its promise of a love

waiting to be found, a love I could still hope for, lifted

me out of the abyss I had fallen into. My grief was a

heavy, despairing sadness caused by parting from a com­

panion of many years but, more important, it was a de­

spair rooted in the fea r that love did not exist, could not

be found. And even if it were lurking somewhere, I might

never know it in my lifetime. It had become hard for me

to continue to believe in love's promise when everywhere

I turned the enchantment of power or the terror of fear

overshadowed the will to love.

One day on my way to work, looking forward to the

day's meditation on love that the sight of the graffiti art

engendered, I was stunned to find tha t the construction

company had painted over the picture with a white paint

so glaringly bright it was possible to see faint traces of

the original art underneath. Upset that what had now be­

come a ritual affi rmation of love's grace was no longer

there to welcome me, I told everyone of my disappoint­

ment. Finally someone passed on the rumor that the graf­

fit i art had been whitewashed because the words were a

reference to individuals living with HIV and that the

x V I

INTRODUCTIO N

artist might be gay. Perhaps. It is just as likely that the

men who splashed paint on the wall were threatened by

this public confessing of a longing for love-a longing so

intense it could not only be spoken but was deliberately

searched for.

After much searching I located the artist and talked with

him face-to-face about the meaning of love. We spoke

about the way public art can be a vehicle for the sharing

of life-affirming thoughts . And we both expressed our

grief and annoyance that the construction company had

so callously covered up a powerful message about love.

To remind me of the construction walls, he gave me snap­

shots of the graffiti art . From the time we met, everywhere

I have lived I have placed these snapshots above my

kitchen sink. Every day, when I drink water or take a dish

from the cupboard, I stand before this reminder that we

yearn for love- that we seek it- even when we lack hope

that it really can be found .

THE REA R E NOT many public discussions of love in

our culture right now. At best, popular culture is the one

domain in which our longing for love is talked about.

Movies, music, magazines, and books are the place where

we turn to hear our yearnings for love expressed. Yet the

talk is not the life-affirming discourse of the sixties and

seventies, which urged us to believe" All you need is love."

Nowadays the most popular messages are those that de-

x V I I

INTRODUCTION

clare the meaningless of love, its irrelevance. A glaring ex­

ample of this cultural shift was the tremendous popularity

of Tina Turner 's song with the title boldly declaring,

"What's Love Got to Do with It." I was saddened and

appalled when I interviewed a well-known female rapper

at least twenty years my junior who, when asked about

love, responded with biting sarcasm, "Love, what 's that- ­

I have never had any love in my life."

Youth culture today is cynical about love. And that cyn­

icism has come from their pervasive feeling that love can­

not be found. Expressing this concern in When All You've

Ever Wanted Isn't Enough, Harold Kushner writes: "1 am

afraid that we may be raising a generation of young peo­

ple who will grow up afraid to love, afraid to give them­

selves completely to another person, because they will

have seen how much it hurts to take the risk of loving and

have it not work out. I am afraid that they will grow up

looking for intimacy without risk, for pleasure without

significant emotional investment. They will be so fearful

of the pain of disappointment that they will forgo the pos­

sibilities of love and joy." Young people are cynical about

love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disap­

pointed and betrayed heart.

When I travel around the nation giving lectures about

ending racism and sexism, audiences, especially young lis­

teners, become agitated when I speak about the place of

x VII I

INTRODUCTION

love in any movement fo r social justice. Indeed, all the

great movements for social justice in our society have

strongly emphasized a love ethic. Yet young listeners re­

main reluctant to embrace the idea of love as a trans­

formative force . To them, love is for the naive, the weak,

the hopelessly romantic. Their attitude is mirrored in

the grown-ups they turn to for explanations. As spokes­

person for a disillusioned generation, Elizabeth Wurtzel

asserts in Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women: "None of

us are getting better at loving: we are getting more scared

of it. We were not given good skills to begin with, and

the choices we make have tended only to reinforce our

sense that it is hopeless and useless ." Her words echo all

that I hear an older generation say about love.

When I talked of love with my generation, I found it

made everyone nervous or scared, especially when I spoke

about not feeling loved enough. On several occasions as I

talked about love with friends, I was told I should con­

sider seeing a therapist. I understood that a few friends

were simply weary of my bringing up the topic of love

and felt that if I saw a therapist it would give them a

break. But most folks were just frightened of what might

be revealed in any exploration of the meaning of love in

our lives .

Yet whenever a single woman over forty brings up the

topic of love, again and again the assumption, rooted in

XIX

INTRODUCTION

sexist thinking, is that she is "desperate" for a man. No

one thinks she is simply passionately intellectually inter­

ested in the subject matter. No one thinks she is rigorously

engaged in a philosophical undertaking wherein she is en­

deavoring to understand the metaphysical meaning of love

in everyday life. No, she is just seen as on the road to

"fatal attraction."

Disappointment and a pervasive feeling of brokenheart­

edness led me to begin thinking more deeply about the

meaning of love in our culture . My longing to find love

did not make me lose my sense of reason or perspective;

it gave me the incentive to think more, to talk about love,

and to study popular and more serious writing on the sub­

ject. As I pored over nonfiction books on the subject of

love, I was surprised to find that the vast majority of the

"revered" books, ones used as reference works and even

those popular as self-help books, have been written by

men. All my life I have thought of love as primarily a topic

women contemplate with greater intensity and vigor than

anybody else on the planet. I still hold this belief even

though visionary female thinking on the subject has yet to

be taken as seriously as the thoughts and writings of men.

Men theorize about love, but women are more often love's

practitioners. Most men feel that they receive love and

therefore know what it feels like to be loved; women often

feel we are in a constant state of yearning, wanting love

but not receiving it.

xx

INTRODU CTION

In philosopher Jacob Needleman 's primer A Little Book

About Love, virtually all the major narratives of love he

comments on are written by men . His list of significant

references doesn't include books written by women.

Throughout my graduate school training for a doctorate

in literature, I can recall only one woman poet being

extolled as a high priestess of love-Elizabeth Barrett

Browning. She was, however, considered a minor poet.

Yet even the most nonliterary student among us knew the

opening line of her most well-known sonnet: "How do I

love thee? Let me count the ways." This was in pre­

feminist days. In the wake of the contemporary feminist

movement, the Greek poet Sappho has now become en­

shrined as another love goddess.

Back then, in every creative writing course the poets

dedicated to the love poem were always male. Indeed, the

partner I left after many years first courted me with a love

poem. He had always been emotionally unavailable and

not at all interested in love as either a topic for discussion

or a daily life practice, but he was absolutely confident

that he had something meaningful to say on the subject.

I, on the other hand, thought all my grown-up attempts

to write love poems were mushy and pathetic. Words

failed me when I tried to write about love. My thoughts

seemed sentimental, silly, and superficial. When writing

poetry in my girlhood, I had felt the same confidence I

would come to see in my adult life only in male writers.

x X 1

INTRODUCTION

When I first began to write poetry in girlhood, I thought

love was the only topic, the most important passion. In­

deed, the first poem I published, at age twelve, was called

"a look at love ." Somewhere along the way, in that pas­

sage from girlhood to womanhood, I learned females re­

ally had nothing serious to teach the world about love .

Death became my chosen topic. No one around me,

professors and students alike, doubted a woman's ability

to be serious when it came to th inking and writing about

death. All the poems in my first book were on the topic

of death and dying. Even so, the poem that opened the

book, "The woman's mourning song," was about the loss

of a loved one and the refusal to let death destroy mem­

ory. Contemplating death has always been a subject that

leads me back to love. Significantly, I began to think more

about the meaning of love as I witnessed the deaths of

many friends, comrades , and acquaintances, many of them

dying young and unexpectedly. When I was approaching

the age of forty and facing the type of cancer scares that

have become so commonplace in women's lives they are

practically routine, my first thought as I waited for test

results was that I was not ready to die because I had not

yet fo und the love my heart had been seeking.

Shortly after this crisis ended, I had a grave illness that

was life threatening. Confronting the possibility of dying,

I became obsessed with the meaning of love in my life and

x XII

I NTRODUCTION

in contemporary culture. My work as a cultural critic of­

fered me a constant opportunity to pay close attention to

everything the mass media, particularly movies and maga­

zines, tell us about love. Mostly they tell us that everyone

wants love but that we remain totally confused about the

practice of love in everyday life. In popular culture love is

always the stuff of fantasy. Maybe this is why men have

done most of the theorizing about love. Fantasy has pri­

marily been their domain, both in the sphere of cultural

production and in everyday life. Male fantasy is seen as

something that can create reality, whereas female fantasy

is regarded as pure escape. Hence, the romance novel re­

mains the only domain in which women speak of love

with any degree of authority . However, when men appro­

priate the romance genre their work is far more rewarded

than is the writing of women. A book like The Bridges of

Madison County is the supreme example. Had a woman

penned this sentimental, shallow story of love (which did,

though, have its moments) it is unlikely it would ever have

become such a major mainstream success, crossing all

boundaries of genre.

Of course, consumers of books about love are primarily

female . Yet male sexism alone does not explain the lack

of more books by and about love written by women. Ap­

parently, women are both wiliing and eager to hear what

men have to say about love. Female sexist thinking may

x XIII

I"TROI)UCTIO'<

lead a woman to feel she already knows what another

woman will say. Such a reader may feel that she has more

to gain by reading what men have to say.

Earlier in my life I read books about love and never

thought about the gender of the writer. Eager to under­

stand what we mean when we speak of love, I did not

really consider the extent to which gender shaped

a writer's perspective. It was only when I began to

think seriously about the subject of love and to write

about it that I pondered whether women do this differ­

ently from men.

Reviewing the literature on love I noticed how few writ­

ers, male or female, talk about the impact of patriarchy,

the way in which male domination of women and children

stands in the way of love. Joh n Bradshaw's Creating Love:

The Next Great Stage of Growth is one of my favorite

books on the topic. He valiantly attempts to establish the

link between male domination (the institut ionalization of

patriarchy) and the lack of love of fa milies. Famous for

work that calls attention to the "inner child," Bradshaw

believes that ending patriarchy is one step in the direction

of love . However, his work on love has never received

ongoing attention and celebration. It did not get the notice

given work by men who write about love while affirming

sexist-defined gender ro les.

Profound changes in the way we think and act must

take place if we are to create a loving culture. Men writing

x X 1 V

I~TR()DLJC T l()N

3bout love always testify that they have received love .

They speak from this position; it gives what they say au ­

thority. Women, more often than not, speak from a po­

sition of lack, of not hav ing received the love we long for.

A woman who talks of love is still suspect . Perhaps this

is because all that enlightened woman may have to say

about love will stand as a direct th reat and challenge to

the visions men have offered us. I enjoy what male writers

have to say about love. I cherish my Rumi and my Rilke,

male poets who stir hearts with their words. Men often

write about love through fantasy , through what they

imagine is possible rather than what they concretely

know. We know now that Rilke did not write as he lived,

that so many words of love offered us by great men fail

us when we come face to face with reality. And even

though John Gray's work troubles me and makes me mad,

I confess to reading and rereading Men Are from Mars,

Women Are from Venus. But, like many women and men,

I want to know about the meaning of love beyond the

realm of fantasy-beyond what we imagine can happen .

I want to know love's truths as we live them .

Almost all the recent popular self-help writing by men

on love, from works like Men Are from Mars, Women

Are from Venus to John Welwood's Love and Awakening,

make use of feminist perspectives on gender roles. Ulti­

mately, though, the authors remain wedded to belief

systems, which suggest that there are basic inherent dif-

x x v

INTROD UC TION

ferences between women and men. In actuality, all the

concrete proof indicates that while the perspectives of men

and women often differ, these differences are learned char­

acteristics, not innate, or "natural," traits . If the notion

that men and women were absolute opposites inhabiting

totally different emotional universes were true, men would

never have become the supreme authorities on love. Given

gender stereotypes that assign to women the role of feel­

ings and being emotional and to men the role of reason

and non-emotion, "real men" would shy away from any

talk of love.

Though considered the established "authorities" on the

subject, only a few men talk freely, telling the world what

they think about love . In everyday life males and females

alike are relatively silent about love. Our silence shields us

from uncertainty. We want to know love. We are simply

afraid the desire to know too much about love will lead

us closer and closer to the abyss of lovelessness . While

ours is a na tion wherein the vast majority of citizens are

followers of religious faiths that proclaim the transfor­

mative power of love, many people feel that they do not

have a clue as to how to love . And practically everyone

suffers a crisis of faith when it comes to realizing biblical

theories about the art of loving in everyday li fe. It is far

easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is

easier to articulate the pain of love 's absence than to de­

scribe its presence and meaning in our lives.

x x V I

INTRODUCTION

Taught to believe that the mind, not the heart, is the

seat of learning, many of us believe that to speak of love

with any emotional intensity means we will be perceived

as weak and irrational. And it is especially hard to speak

of love when what we have to say calls attention to the

fact that lovelessness is more common than love, that

many of us are not sure what we mean when we ta lk of

love or how to express love.

Everyone wants to know more about love. We want to

know what it means to love, what we can do in our every­

day lives to love and be loved. We want to know how to

seduce those among us who remain wedded to lovelessness

and open the door to their hearts to let love enter. The

strength of our desire does not change the power of our

cultural uncertainty. Everywhere we learn that love is im­

portant, and yet we are bombarded by its failure. In the

realm of the political, among the religious, in our families ,

and in our romantic lives, we see little indication that love

informs decisions, strengthens our understanding of com­

munity, or keeps us together. This bleak picture in no way

alters the nature of our longing. We still hope that love

will prevail. We still believe in love's promise.

Just as the graffiti proclaimed, our hope lies in the re­

ality that so many of us continue to believe in love's

power. We believe it is important to know love. We be­

lieve it is important to search for love's truths . In an over­

whelming number of private conversations and public

x x V I I

INTRODUCTION

dialogues, I have given and heard testimony about the

mounting lovelessness in our culture and the fea r it strikes

in everyone's heart. This despair about love is coupled

with a callous cynicism that frowns upon any suggestion

that love is as important as work , as crucial to our survival

as a nation as the drive to succeed. Awesomely, our na­

tion, like no other in the world, is a culture driven by the

quest to love (it 's the theme of our movies, music, litera­

ture) even as it offers so little opportunity for us to un­

derstand love's meaning or to know how to realize love

in word and deed .

Our nation is equally driven by sexual obsession. There

is no aspect of sexuality that is not studied, talked about,

or demonstrated. How-to classes exist for every dimension

of sexuality, even masturbation . Yet schools for love do

not exist. Everyone assumes that we will know how to

love instinctively. Despite overwhelming evidence to the

contrary, we still accept that the family is the primary

school for love . Those of us who do not learn how to love

among family are expected to experience love in romantic

relationships. H owever, this love often eludes us. And we

spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty,

neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our

families of origin and in relationships where we simply did

not know what to do .

Only love can heal the wounds of the past. However,

the intensity of our woundedness often leads to a closing

x x VIII

I NTRODllCTION

of the heart, making it impossible for us to give or receive

the love that is given to us. To open our hearts more fully

to love's power and grace we must dare to acknowledge

how little we know of love in both theory and practice.

We must face the confusion and disappointment that

much of what we were taught about the nature of love

makes no sense when applied to daily life. Contemplating

the practice of love in everyday life, thinking about how

we love and what is needed for ours to become a culture

where love's sacred presence can be felt everywhere, I

wrote this meditation.

As the title All About Love: New Visions indicates, we

want to live in a culture where love can flourish . We yearn

to end the lovelessness that is so pervasive in our society.

This book tells us how to return to love. All About Love:

New Visions provides radical new ways to think about

the art of loving, offering a hopeful, joyous vision of love's

transformative power. It lets us know what we must do

to love again . Gathering love 's wisdom, it lets us know

what we must do to be touched by love's grace.

x X 1 X

All About Love

One

CLARITY:

GIVE LOVE WORDS

As a society we are embarrassed by love. We treat it

as if it were an obscenity. We reluctantly admit to it.

Even saying the word makes us stumble and blush ...

Love is the most important thing in our lives, a pas­

sion for which we would fight or die, and yet we ' re

reluctant to linger over its names. W ithout a supple

vocabulary, we can ' t even talk or think about it

directly .

- DIANE ACKER lv1A N

TE MEN IN my life have always been the folks

who are wary of using the word "love" lightly. They are

wary because they believe women make too much of love.

And they know that what we think love means is not al ­

ways what they believe it means. Our confusion about

what we mean when we use the word "love" is the source

of our difficulty in loving. If our society had a commonly

held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of lov­

ing would not be so mystifying. Dictionary definitions of

love tend to emphasize romantic love, defining love first

and foremost as "profoundly tender, passionate affection

for another person, especially when based on sexual at­

traction." Of course, other definitions let the reader know

one may have such feelings within a context that is not

sexual. However, deep affection does not really ade­

quately describe love's meaning.

The vast majority of books on the subject of love work

3

Al.L ABOUT l.OVE

hard to avoid giving clear definitions. In the introduction

to Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love, she de­

clares "Love is the great intangible ." A few sentences

down from this she suggests: "Everyone admits that love

is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what

it is." Coyly, she adds: "We use the word love in such a

sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely

everything." No definition ever appears in her book that

would help anyone trying to learn the art of loving. Yet

she is not alone in writing of love in ways that cloud our

understanding. When the very meaning of the word is

cloaked in mystery, it should not come as a surprise that

most people find it hard to define what they mean when

they use the word "love."

Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn

how to love if we began with a shared definition. The

word "love" is most often defined as a noun, yet all the

more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would

all love better if we used it as a verb. I spent years search­

ing for a meaningful definition of the word "love," and

was deeply relieved when I found one in psychiatrist

M. Scott Peck's classic self-help book The Road Less

Traveled, first published in 1978. Echoing the work of

Erich Fromm, he defines love as "the will to extend one's

self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's

spiritual growth." Explaining further, he continues:

"Love is as love does . Love is an act of will-namely,

4

CLARITY : GIVE LOVE WlORDS

both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice.

We do not have to love . We choose to love." Since the

choice must be made to nurture growth, th is definition

counters the more widely accepted assumption that we

love instinctually.

Everyone who has witnessed the growth process of a

child from the moment of birth on sees clearly that before

language is known, before the identity of caretakers is rec­

ognized, babies respond to affectionate care. Usually they

respond with sounds or looks of pleasure. As they grow

older they respond to affectionate care by giving affection,

cooing at the sight of a welcomed caretaker. Affection is

only one ingredient of love. To truly love we must learn

to mix various ingredients-care, affection, recognition,

respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and

open communication. Learning faulty definitions of love

when we are quite young makes it difficult to be loving as

we grow older. We start out committed to the right path

but go in the wrong direction. Most of us learn early on

to think of love as a feeling . When we feel deeply drawn

to someone, we cathect with them; that is, we invest feel­

ings or emotion in them. That process of investment

wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called

"cathexis." In his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most

of us "confuse cathecting with loving." We all know how

often individuals feeling connected to someone through

the process of cathecting insist that they love the other

5

ALL ABOU T LOVE

person even if they are hurting or neglecting them. Since

their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they

feel is love.

When we understand love as the will to nurture our

own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that

we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.

Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by

definition, the opposites of nurturance and care. Often we

hear of a man who beats his children and wife and then

goes to the corner bar and passionately proclaims how

much he loves them. If you talk to the wife on a good

day, she may also insist he loves her, despite his violence .

An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional

families in which we were taught we were not okay, where

we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and

emotionally neglected even as were also taught to believe

that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threat­

ening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer

enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many

of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes

abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever

happened was not that bad.

Raised in a fami ly in which aggress ive shaming and ver­

bal humiliation coexisted with lots of affection and care,

I had difficulty em bracing the term "dysfunctional." Since

I felt and still feel attached to my parents and sib lings,

proud of all the positive dimensions of our family life, I

6

C L ARI TY: C I V E LOVE WO RDS

did not want to describe us by using a term that implied

our life together had been all negative or bad . I did not

want my parents to think I was disparaging them; I was

apprecia tive of all the good things that they had given in

the family . W ith therapeutic help I was able to see the

term "dysfunctional" as a useful description and not as

an absolute negative judgment. My family of origin pro­

vided, throughout my childhood, a dysfunctional setting

and it remains one. T his does not mean that it is not also

a setting in which affection, delight, and care are present.

On any day in my family of origin I might have been

given caring attention wherein my being a smart girl was

affirmed and encouraged . Then, hours later, I would be

told that it was precisely beca use I thought r was so smart

that I was likely to go crazy and be put in a mental insti­

tution where no one would visi t me. Not surprisingly, this

odd mixture of care and unkindness did not positively

nurture the growth of my spirit. Applying Peck's definition

of love to my childhood experience in my household of

origin, I could not honestly describe it as loving.

Pressed in therapy to describe my household of origin

in terms of whether it was loving or not, I painfully ad ­

mitted that I did not feel loved in our household but that

I did feel cared for. And outside my household of origin

I felt genuinely loved by individual family members, like

my grandfather. This experience of genuine love (a com­

bination of care, commi tment, trust, knowl edge, respon-

7

i\ L 1 A II () U T l . 0 V F

sibility, and respect) nurtured my wounded spirit and

enabled me to survive acts of lovelessness. I am grateful

to have been raised in a family that was caring, and

strongly believe that had my parents been loved well by

their parents they would have given that love to their chil­

dren. They gave what they had been given-care . Remem­

ber, care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care

does not mean we are loving.

Like many adults who were verbally and/or physically

abused as children, I spent a lot of my life trying to deny the

bad things that had happened, trying to cling only to the

memory of good and delicious moments in which I had

known care. In my case, the more successful I became, the

more I wanted to cease speaking the truth about my child­

hood. Often, critics of self-help literature and recovery pro­

grams like to make it seem that far too many of us are eager

to embrace the belief that our families of origins were, are, or

remain dysfunctional and lacking in love but I have found

that, like myself, most people, whether ra ised in an exces­

sively violent or abusive home or not, shy away from em­

bracing any negative critique of our experiences. Usually, it

requires some therapeutic intervention, whether through lit­

erature that teaches and enlightens us or therapy, before

many of us can even begin to critically examine childhood

experiences and acknowledge the ways in which they have

had an impact on our adult behavior.

Most of us find it difficult to accept a definition of love

8

C L A R 1 T Y: C; 1 V EL 0 V E W () R 0 S

that says we are never loved in a context where there is

abuse. Most psychologically and/or physically abused chil ­

dren have been taught by parenting adults that love can

coexist with abuse. And in extreme cases that abuse is an

expression of love . This faulty thinking often shapes our

adult perceptions of love. So that just as we would cling

to the notion that those who hurt us as children loved us,

we try to rationalize being hurt by other adults by insisting

that they love us . In my case, many of the negative sham­

ing practices I was subjected to in childhood continued in

my romantic adult relationships. Initially, I did not want

to accept a definition of love that would also compel me

to face the possibility that I had not known love in the

relationships that were most primary to me. Years of

therapy and critical reflection enabled me to accept that

there is no stigma attached to acknowledging a lack of

love in one's primary rela tionships. And if one's goal is

self-recovery, to be well in one's soul, honestly and real­

istica lly confronting lovelessness is part of the healing

process . A lack of sustained love does not mean the ab­

sence of care, affection, or pleasure . In fact, my long-term

romantic re lationships, like the bonds in my family, have

been so full of ca re that it would be quite easy to overlook

the ongoing emotional dysfunction.

In order to change the lovelessness in my primary rela­

tionships, I had to first learn anew the meaning of love and

from there learn how to be loving. Embracing a definition

9

,'\ I. I. ,-\ B 0 U T L 0 V E

of love that was clear was the first step in the process. Like

many who read The Road Less Traveled again and again, I

am grateful to have been given a definition of love that

helped me face the places in my life where love was lacking.

I was in my mid-twenties when I first learned to understand

love "as the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nur­

turing one's own or another's spiritual growth." It still

took years for me to let go of learned patterns of behavior

[hat negated my capacity to give and receive love. One

pattern that made the practice of love especially difficult

was my constantly choosing to be with men who were

emotionally wounded, who were not that interested in be­

ing loving even though they desired to be loved.

I wanted to know love but I was afraid to surrender

and trust another person . I was afraid to be intimate . By

choosing men who were not interested in being loving, I

was able to practice giving love, but always within an un­

fufilling context. Naturally, my need to receive love was

not met. I got what I was accustomed to getting-care

and affection, usually mingled with a degree of unkind­

ness, neglect, and, on some occasions, outright cruelty. At

times I was unkind. It took me a long time to recognize

that while I wanted to know love, I was afraid to be truly

intimate . Many of us choose relationships of affection and

care that will never become loving because they feel safer.

The demands are not as intense as loving requires . The

risk is not as great.

I 0

Ct.\kITY : GIVF LOVE \VOkDS

So many of us long for love but lack the courage to take

risks . Even though we are obsessed with the idea of love,

the truth is that most of us live relatively decent, some­

what satisfying lives even if we often feel that love is lack­

ing . In these relationships we share genuine affection and/

or care. For most of us, that fee ls like enough because it

is usually a lot more than we received in our families of

origin. Undoubtedly, many of us are more comfortab le

with the notion that love can mean anything to anybody

precisely because when we define it with precision and

clarity it brings us face to face with our lacks-with ter­

rible alienation. The truth is, far too many people in our

culture do not know what love is. And this not knowing

feels like a terrible secret, a lack that we have to cover up.

H ad I been given a clear definition of love earlier in my

life it would not have taken me so long to become a more

loving person. Had I shared with others a common un­

derstanding of what it means to love it would have been

easier to create love . It is particularly distressing that so

many recent books on love continue to insist that defini­

tions of love are unnecessary and meaningless . Or worse,

the authors suggest love should mean something different

to men than it does to women- that the sexes should re­

spect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we

do not share the same language. This type of literature is

popular because it does not demand a change in fixed

ways of thinking about gender roles, cul ture, or love .

I I

ALl ,\BOUT LOVE

Rather than sharing strategies that would help us become

more loving it actually encourages everyone to adapt to

circumstances where love is lacking.

Women, more so than men, rush out to purchase this

literature. We do so because collectively we are concerned

about lovelessness. Since many women believe they will

never know fulfilling love, they are will ing to settle for

strategies that help ease the pain and increase the peace,

pleasure, and playfulness in existing relationships, particu­

larly romantic ones . No vehicle in our culture exists for

readers to talk back to the writers of this literature. And

we do not really know if it has been truly useful, if it

promotes constructive change. The fact that women, more

than men, buy self-help books, using our consumer dollars

to keep specific books on bestseller lists, is no indication

that these books actually help us transform our lives . I

have bought tons of self-help books. Only a very few have

really made a difference in my life . This is true for many

readers .

The lack of an ongomg public discussion and public

policy about the practice of love in our culture and in our

lives means that we still look to books as a primary source

of guidance and direction. Large numbers of readers em­

brace Peck's definition of love and are applying it to their

lives in ways that are helpful and transformative . We can

spread the word by evoking this definition in day-to-day

I 2

CLARITY: CIVE LOVE WORDS

conversations, not just when we talk to other adults but in

our conversations with children and teenagers. When we

intervene on mystifying assumptions that love cannot be

defined by offering workable, useful definitions, we are al­

ready creating a context where love can begin to flourish.

Some folks have difficulty with Peck's definition of love

because he uses the word "spiritual." He is referring to

that dimension of our core reality where mind, body, and

spirit are one. An individual does not need to be a believer

in a religion to embrace the idea that there is an animating

principle in the self-a life force (some of us call it soul)

that when nurtured enhances our capacity to be more fully

self-actualized and able to engage in communion with the

world around us.

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather

than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word

in this manner automatically assumes accountability and

responsibility. We are often taught we have no control

over our "feelings." Yet most of us accept that we choose

our actions, that intention and will inform what we do .

We also accept that our actions have consequences. To

think of actions shaping fee lings is one way we rid our­

selves of conventionally accepted assumptions such as that

parents love their children, or that one simply "falls" in

love without exercising will or choice, that there are such

things as "crimes of passion," i.e., he killed her because

r 3

ALL ABOUT LOVE

he loved her so much. If we were constantly remembering

that love is as love does, we would not use the word in a

manner that devalues and degrades its meaning. When we

are loving we openly and honestly express care, affection,

responsibility, respect, commitment, and trust.

Definitions are vital starting points for the imagination.

What we cannot imagine cannot come into being. A good

definition marks our starting point and lets us know where

we want to end up. As we move toward our desired des­

tination we chart the journey, creating a map. We need a

map to guide us on our journey to love-starting with the

place where we know what we mean when we speak of

love.

I 4

Two

JUSTICE:

CHILDHOOD LOVE LESSONS

Severe separations in early life leave emotional scars

on the brain because they assault the essential human

connection: The [parent-child] bond which teaches us

that we are lovable. The [parent-child] bond which

teaches us how to love. We cannot be whole human

beings- indeed, we may find it hard to be human­

without the sustenance of this firs t attachment.

- JUDITH VrORST

WLEARN ABOUT love in childhood. Wheth"

our homes are happy or troubled, our families functional

or dysfunctional, it's the original school of love. I cannot

remember ever wanting to ask my parents to define love.

To my child's mind love was the good feeling you got

when family treated you like you mattered and you treated

them like they mattered. Love was always and only about

good feeling. In early adolescence when we were whipped

and told that these punishments were "for our own good "

or "I'm doing this because I love you," my siblings and I

were confused. Why was harsh punishment a gesture of

love? As children do, we pretended to accept this grown­

up logic; but we knew in our hearts it was not right. We

knew it was a lie. Just like the lie the grown-ups told when

they explained after harsh punishment, "It hurts me more

than it hurts you." There is nothing that creates more con­

fus ion about love in the minds and hearts of children than

I 7

ALL ABOUT LOVE

unkind and/or cruel punishment meted out by the grown­

ups they have been taught they should love and respect.

Such children learn early on to question the meaning of

love, to yearn for love even as they doubt it exists .

On the flip side there are masses of children who grow

up confident love is a good feeling who are never pun­

ished, who are allowed to believe that love is only about

getting your needs met, your desires satisfied. In their

child's minds love is not about what they have to give,

love is mostly something given to them. When children

like these are overindulged either materially or by being

allowed to act out, this is a form of neglect. These chil­

dren, though not in any way abused or uncared for, are

usually as unclear about love's meaning as their neglected

and emotionally abandoned counterparts. Both groups

have learned to think about love primarily in relation to

good feelings, in the context of reward and punishment.

From early childhood on, most of us remember being told

we were loved when we did things pleasing to our parents .

And we learned to give them affirmations of love when

they pleased us. As children grow they associate love more

with acts of attention, affection, and caring. They still see

parents who attempt to satisfy their desires as giving love.

Children from all classes tell me that they love their

parents and are loved by them, even those who are being

hurt or abused. When asked to define love, small children

pretty much agree that it's a good feeling, "like when you

I 8

JUSTICE : CHILDHOOD LOVE LESSONS

have something to eat that you really like" especially if

it's your f-a-v-o-r-i-t-e. They will say, "My mommy loves

me 'cause she takes care of me and helps me do everything

right." When asked how to love someone, they talk about

giving hugs and kisses, being sweet and cuddly. The no­

tion that love is about getting what one wants, whether

it's a hug or a new sweater or a trip to Disneyland, is a

way of thinking about love that makes it difficult for chil­

dren to acquire a deeper emotional understanding.

We like to imagine that most children will be born into

homes where they will be loved. But love will not be pres­

ent if the grown-ups who parent do not how to love. Al­

though lots of children are raised in homes where they are

given some degree of care, love may not be sustained or

even present. Adults across lines of class, race, and gender

indict the family. Their testimony conveys worlds of child­

hood where love was lacking-where chaos, neglect,

abuse, and coercion reigned supreme. In her recent book

Raised in Captivity: Why Does America Fail Its Children?,

Lucia Hodgson documents the reality of lovelessness in the

lives of a huge majority of children in the United States.

Every day thousands of children in our culture are verbally

and physically abused, starved, tortured, and murdered .

They are the true victims of intimate terrorism in that they

have no collective voice and no rights. They remain the

property of parenting adults to do with as they will.

There can be no love without justice . Until we live in a

I 9

ALL ABOU T LO V E

culture that not only respects but also upholds basic civil

rights for children, most children will not know love. In

our culture the private family dwell ing is the one institu­

tionalized sphere of power tha t can easily be autocratic

and fascistic. As absolute rulers, parents can usually decide

without any intervention what is best for their children. If

children's rights are taken away in any domestic house­

hold, they have no legal recourse. Unlike women who can

organize to protest sexist domination, demanding both

equal rights and justice, children can only rely on well­

meaning adults to assist them if they are being exploited

and oppressed in the home.

We all know that, irrespective of class or race, other

adults rarely intervene to question or challenge what their

peers are doing with "their" children.

At a fun party, mostly of educated, well-paid profes­

sionals, a multiracial, multigenerational evening, the sub­

ject of disciplining kids by hitting was raised. Almost all

the guests over thirty spoke about the necessity of using

physical punishment. Many of us in the room had been

smacked, whipped, or beaten as children. Men spoke the

loudest in defense of physical punishment. Women, mostly

mothers, talked about hitting as a last resort, but one that

they deployed when necessary.

As one man bragged about the aggressive beatings he

had received from his mother, sharing that "they had been

good for him," I interrupted and suggested that he might

2 0

JUSTICE: CHILDHOOD LOVE LE~\() N S

not be the misogynist woman-hater he is today if he had

not been brutally beaten by a woman as a child. Al though

it is too simplistic to assume that just because we are hit

as kids we will grow up to be people who hit, I wanted

the group to acknowledge that being physically hurt or

abused by grown-ups when we are children has harmful

consequences in our adult life.

A young professional, the mother of a small boy,

bragged about the fact that she did not hit, that when

her son misbehaved she clamped down on his flesh,

pinching him until he got the message. But th is, too, is a

form of coercive abuse. The other guests supported this

young mother and her husband in their methods. I was

astounded. I was a lone voice speaking out for the rights

of children.

Later, with other people, I suggested that had we all

been listening to a man tell us that every time his wife or

girlfriend does something he does not like he just clamps

down on her flesh, pinching her as hard as he can, every­

one would have been appalled. They would have seen the

action as both coercive and abusive. Yet they could not

acknowledge that it was wrong for an adult to hurt a child

in this way. All the parents in that room claim that they

are loving. All the people in that room were college edu­

cated. Most call themselves good liberals, supportive of

civil rights and feminism. But when it came to the rights

of children they had a different standard.

2 I

.\LL .. \BOUT L OVE

One of the most important social myths we must de­

bunk if we are to become a more loving culture is the one

that teaches parents that abuse and neglect can coexist

with love. Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affir­

mation, the opposite of abuse and humil ia tion, are the

foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be lov­

ing when behaving abusively. Yet parents do this all the

time in our culture. Children are told that they are loved

even though they are being abused.

It is a testimony to the failure of loving practice that

abuse is happening in the first place.

Many of the men who offer their personal testimony in

Boyhood, Growing Up Male tell stories of random violent

abuse by parents that inflicted trauma. In his essay "When

My Father Hit Me," Bob Shelby describes the pain of re­

peated beatings by his dad, stating: "From these experi­

ences with my father, I learned about the abuse of power.

By physically hitting my mother and me, he effectively

stopped us from reacting to his humiliation of us. We

ceased to protest his violations of our boundaries and his

ignoring our sense of being individuals with needs, de­

mands and rights of our own." Throughout his essay

Shelby expresses contradictory understandings about the

meaning of love. On the one hand, he says: "I have no

doubt that my father loved me, but his love became mis­

directed. He said he wanted to give me what he didn't

have as a child ." On the other hand, Shelby confesses:

2 2

JUSTICE: CHILDHOOD LOV! LESSONS

"What he most showed me, however, was his difficulty in

being loved . All his li fe he had struggled with feelings of

being unloved." When Shelby describes his childhood it is

clear that his dad had affection for him and also gave him

care some of the time. H owever, his dad did not know

how to give and receive love. The affection he gave was

undermined by the abuse.

Writing from the space of adult recollection, Shelby

talks about the impact of physical abuse on his boyhood

psyche: "As the intensity of the pain of his hits increased,

I felt the hurt in my heart. I realized what hurt me the

most were my feelings of love for this man who was hit­

ting me. I covered my love with a dark cloth of hate." A

similar story is told by other men in autobiographical

narrative-men of all classes and races. One of the myths

about lovelessness is that it exists only among the poor

and deprived. Yet lovelessness is not a function of poverty

or material lack. In homes where material privileges

abound, children suffer emotional neglect and abuse. In

order to cope with the pain of wounds inflicted in child­

hood, most of the men in Boyhood sought some form of

therapeutic care. To find their way back to love they had

to heal.

Many men in our cul ture never recover from childhood

unkindnesses . Studies show that males and females who

are violently humil iated and abused repeatedly, with no

caring intervention, are likely to be dysfunctional and will

2 3

,\ I I. .-\ II () LI T I U V I·

be predisposed to ab use others violently. In Jarvis Jay

Masters 's book Finding Freedom: Writings (rom Death

Row, a chapter called "Scars" recounts hi s recognition

that a vast majority of the scars covering the bodies of

fellow inmates (not all of whom were on death row) were

not, as one might think, the resul t of violent adult inter­

actions. These men were covered with scars from child ­

hood beatings inflicted by parenting adults. Yet, he

reports, none of them saw themselves as the victims of

abuse: "Throughout my many years of institut ionaliza­

tion, I, like so many of these men, unconsciously took

refuge behind prison walls . Not until I read a series of

books for adults who had been abused as chi ldren did I

become committed to the process of examining my own

childhood." Organizing the men for group discussion,

Masters writes: "I spoke to them of the pain I had carried

through more than a dozen institutions. And I explained

how all these events ultimately trapped me in a pattern of

lashing out against everything." Like many abused chil ­

dren, male and fem ale, these men were beaten by mothers,

fathers, and other parental caregivers."

When Masters's mother dies he feels grief that he can­

not be with her. The other inma tes do not understand this

longing, since she neglected and abused him. He responds:

"She had neglected me, but am I to neglect myself as well

by denying that I wished I'd been with her when she died,

that I st ill love her?" Even on death row, Masters's

2 4

J If S T 1 ( I: c: II 1 I I) II U () j) I () V fiE S SON S

heart remains open . And he can honestly confess to long­

ing to give and receive love . Being hurt by pa renting adults

rarely alters a child's desire to love and be loved by them.

Among grown-ups who were wounded in childhood, the

desire to be loved by uncaring parents persists, even when

there is a clear acceptance of the reality that this love w ill

never be forthcomi ng.

Often, children will want to remain with parental care­

givers who have hurt them because of thei r cathected feel­

ings for those adu lts . They will cling to the misguided

assumption that their parents love them even in the face

of remembered abuse, usually by denying the abuse and

focusing on random acts of care .

In th e prologue to Creating Love, John Bradshaw calls

this confusion about love "mystification." He shares: " I

was brought up to believe that love is rooted in blood

relationships . You naturally loved anyone in your family.

Love was not a choice . The love I learned about was

bound by duty and obligation . . . . My family taught me

our culture's rules and beliefs about love . .. even with the

best intentions our pa rents often confused love with what

we would now call abuse." T o demystify the meaning of

love, the art and practice of loving, we need to use sound

definitions of love when talking with children, and we a lso

need to ensure that loving action is never tainted with

abuse.

In a society like ours, where children a re denied full civil

2 5

Al.L ABOUT L OVE

rights, it is absolutely crucial that parenting adults learn

how to offer loving discipline . Setting boundaries and

teaching children how to set boundaries for themselves

prior to misbehavior is an essential part of loving parent­

ing. When parents start out disciplining children by using

punishment, this becomes the pattern children respond to.

Loving parents work hard to discipline without punish­

ment. This does not mean that they never punish, only

that when they do punish, they choose punishments like

time-outs or the taking away of privileges. They focus on

teaching children how to be self-disciplining and how to

take responsibility for their actions. Since the vast majority

of us were raised in households where punishment was

deemed the primary, if not the only, way to teach disci­

pline, the fact that discipline can be taught without pun­

ishment surprises many people. One of the simplest ways

children learn discipline is by learning how to be orderly

in daily life, to clean up any messes they make. Just teach­

ing a child to take responsibility for placing toys in the

appropriate place after playtime is one way to teach re­

sponsibility and self-discipline . Learning to clean up the

mess made during playtime helps a child learn to be re­

sponsible. And they can learn from this practical act how

to cope with emotional mess .

WERE THER E CURRENT television shows that actually

modeled loving parenting, parents could learn these skills .

2 6

JUSTICE: C HIl.DHOOD LO VF l.ESSONS

Television shows oriented toward families often favorably

represent children when they are overindulged, are disre­

spectful, or are acting out. Often they behave in a more

adult manner than the parents. What we see on te levision

today actually, at best, models for us inappropriate be­

ha vior, and in worst-case scenarios, unloving behaviors.

A great example of this is a movie like Ho me A lone, which

cele brates disobedience and violence. But television can

portray caring, loving family interaction . There are whole

generations of adults who talk nostalgically about how

they wanted their families to be like the ficti ve portraits

of family life portrayed on Leave It to Beaver or My Three

Sons. We desired our families to be like those we saw on

the screen because we were witnessing loving parent ing,

loving households. Expressing to parents our desire to

have families like the ones we saw on the screen, we were

often told that the families were not realistic. The reality

was, however, that parents who come from unloving

homes have never learned how to love and cannot create

loving home environments or see them as realistic when

watching them on television. The reality they are most

familiar with and trust is the one they knew intimately.

There was nothing utopian about the way problems

were resolved on these shows. Parent and child discussion,

critical reflection, and finding a way to make amends was

usually the process by which misbehavior was addressed.

On both shows there was never just one parent ing figure.

2 7

A I. LAB () UTI 0 V E

Even though the mother was absent on My Three Sons,

the lovable Uncle Charlie was a second parent. In a loving

household where there are several parental caregivers,

when a child feels one parent is being unjust that child

can appeal to another adult for mediation, understanding,

or support. We live in a society where there are a growing

number of single parents, female and male. But the indi­

vidual parent can always choose a friend to be another

parenting figure, however limited their interaction. This is

why the categories of godmother and godfather are so cru­

cial. When my best girlhood friend chose to have a child

without a father in the household, I became the god­

mother, a second parenting figure.

My friend's daughter turns to me to intervene if there

is a misunderstanding or miscommunication between her

and her mom. H ere's one small example. My adult friend

had never received an allowance as a child and did not

feel she had the available extra money to offer an allow­

ance to her daughter. She also believed her daughter

would use all the money to buy sweets. Telling me that

her daughter was angry with her over this issue, she

opened up the space for us to have a dialogue. I shared

my belief that allowances are important ways to teach

children discipline, boundaries, and working through de­

sires versus needs. I knew enough about my friend's fi­

nances to challenge her insistence that she could not afford

to pay a small allowance, while simultaneously encour-

2 8

JUSTrCE: CHrLDHOOD LOVE LESSONS

aging her not to project the wrongs of her childhood onto

the present. As to whether the daughter would buy candy,

I suggested she give the allowance with a statement of

hope that it would not be used for overindulgence and see

what happened.

It all worked out just fine. Happy to have an allowance ,

the daughter chose to save her money to buy things she

thought were really important. And candy was not on this

list. Had there not been another adult parent ing figure

involved, it might have taken these two a longer time to

resolve their conflict, and unnecessary estrangement and

wounding might have occurred. Significantly, love and re­

spectful interaction between two adults exemplified for the

daughter (who was told about the discussion) ways of

problem solving. By revealing her willingness to accept

criticism and her capacity to reflect on her behavior and

change, the mother modeled for her daughter, without los­

ing dignity or authority, the recognition that parents are

not always right.

Until we begin to see loving parenting in all walks of

life in our culture, many people will continue to believe

we can only teach discipline through punishment, and that

harsh punishment is an acceptable way to relate to chil­

dren. Because children can innately offer affection or re­

spond to affectionate care by returning it, it is often

assumed that they know how to love and therefore do not

need to learn the art of loving. While the wil l to love is

2 9

ALL ABOUT LOVE

present in very young children, they still need guidance in

the ways of love. Grown-ups provide that guidance.

Love is as love does, and it is our responsibility to give

children love. When we love children we acknowledge by

our every action that they are not property, that they have

rights- that we respect and uphold their rights .

Without justice there can be no love.

3 0

Three

HONESTY:

BE TRUE TO LOVE

When we reveal ourselves to our partner and find that

this brings healing rather than harm, we make an im­

portant discovery-that intimate relationship can

provide a sanctuary from the world of facades, a sa­

cred space where we can be ourselves, as we are .. . .

This kind of unmasking-speaking our truth, sharing

our inner struggles, and revealing our raw edges- is

sacred activity, which allows two souls to meet and

touch more deeply.

- JOH N WELWOOD

I TIS NO acc,dent that when we first learn about jus­

tice and fair playas children it is usually in a context

where the issue is one of telli ng the truth. The heart of

justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the

way it is rather than the way we want it to be. In recent

years sociologists and psychologists have documented the

fact that we live in a nation where people are lying more

and more each day . Philosopher Sissela Bok's book Lying:

Moral Choice in Public and Private Life was among the

first works to call attention to the grave extent to which

lying has become accepted and commonplace in our daily

interactions . M . Scott Peck 's The Road Less Traveled in­

cludes an enti re section on lying. In The Dance of Decep­

tion, Harriet Lerner, another widely read psychotherapist,

calls attention to the way in which women are encouraged

by sexist socialization to pretend and manipulate, to lie as

a way to please. Lerner outlines the various ways in which

3 3

A I. L All n U T LOVF

constant pretense and lying alienate women from their

true feelings, how it leads to depression and loss of self-

awa reness.

Lies are told about the most insignificant aspects of

daily life. When many of us are asked basic questions, like

How are you today? a lie is substituted for the truth.

Much of the lying people do in everyday life is done either

to avoid conf1ict or to spare someone's fe elings. Hence, if

you are asked to come to dinner with someone whom you

do not particularly like, you do not tell the truth or simply

decli ne, you make up a story . Yo u tell a lie. In such a

situation it should he appropriate to simply decl ine if stat­

ing one's reasons for declining might unnecessari ly hurt

someone.

Lots of people learn how to lie in childhood. Usually

they begin to lie to avoid pun ishment or to avoid disap­

pointing or hurti ng an adult. Hmv many of us can vividly

reca ll childhood moments where we courageously prac­

ticed the honesty we had been taught to value by our par­

ents, only to find that they did not really mean for us to

tell the truth all the time . In far too many cases children

are punished in circumstances where they respond with

honesty to a question posed by an adult authori ty figure.

It is impressed on their consciousness early on, then, that

telling the truth will cause pain. And so they learn that

lying is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others .

Lots of children are confused by the insi stence that they

3 4

HONE ST Y: BE TRUE TO LOVE

simultaneously be honest and yet also learn how to prac­

tice convenient duplicity. As they mature they begin to see

how often grown-ups lie. They begin to see that few peo­

ple around them tell the truth. I was raised in a world

where children were taught to tell the truth, but it did not

take long for us to figure out that adults did not practice

what they preached. Among my siblings, those who

learned how to tell polite lies or say what grown-ups

wanted to hear were always more popular and more re­

warded than those of us who told the truth.

Among any group of kids it is never clear why some

quickly learn the fine art of dissimulation (that is, taking

on whatever appearance is needed to manipulate a situa ­

tion ) while others find it hard to mask true feeling . Since

pretense is such an expected aspect of childhood play, it

is a perfect context for mastering the art of dissimulation.

Concealing the truth is often a fun part of childhood play,

yet when it becomes a common practice it is a dangerous

prelude to lying all the time.

Sometimes children are fascinated by lying because they

see the power it gives them over adults. Imagine: A little

girl goes to school and tells her teacher she is adopted,

knowing all the while that this is not true. She revels in

the attention received, both the sympathy and the under­

standing offered as well as the frustration and anger of

her parents when the teacher calls to talk about this newly

discovered info rmation . A friend of mine who lies a lot

3 5

ALL AllOUT LOVE

tells me she loves fooling people and making them act

on knowledge that only she knows is untrue; she is ten

years old. When I was her age I was frightened by lies . They con-

fused me and they created confusion. Other kids poked

fun at me because I was not good at lying. In the one truly

violent episode between my mother and father, he accused

her of lying to him. Then there was the night an older

sister lied and said she was baby-sitting when she was

actually out on a date . As he hit her, our father kept yell­

ing, "Don't you lie to me!" While the violence of his re­

sponse created in us a terror of the consequences of lying,

it did not alter the reality that we knew he did not always

tell the truth. His favorite way of lying was withholding.

H is motto was "just remain silent" when asked questions,

then you will not get "caught in a lie."

The men I have loved have always lied to avoid con­

frontation or take responsibility for inappropriate behav­

ior. In Dorothy Dinnerstein's groundbreaking book The

Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and

Human Malaise, she shares the insight that when a little

boy learns that his powerful mother, who controls his life,

really has no power within a patriarchy, it confuses him

and causes rage . Lying becomes one of the strategic ways

he can "act out" and render his mother powerless . Lying

enables him to manipulate the mother even as he exposes

her lack of power. This makes him fee l more powerful.

3 6

HONESTY: BE TRUE TO LOVE

Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and

females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend

powerlessness. In her work Harriet Lerner talks about the

way in which patriarchy upholds deception, encouraging

women to present a false self to men and vice versa. In

Dory H ollander's 101 Lies Men Tell Women, she confirms

that while both women and men lie, her data and the

find ings of other researchers indicate that "men tend to lie

more and with more devastating consequences." For many

young males the earliest experience of power over others

comes from the thrill of lying to more powerful adults and

getting away with it . Lots of men shared with me that it

was difficult for them to te ll the truth if they saw that it

would hurt a loved one. Significantly, the lying many boys

learn to do to avoid hurting Mom or whomever becomes

so habitual that it becomes hard for them to distinguish a

lie from the truth. This behavior carries over into adult-

hood.

Often, men who would never think of lying in the work­

place lie constantly in intimate relationships. This seems

to be especially the case for heterosexual men who see

women as gullible. Many men confess that they lie because

they can get away with it; their lies are forgiven . To un­

derstand why male lying is more accepted in our lives we

have to understand the way in which power and privilege

are accorded men simply because they are males within a

patriarchal culture. The very concept of "being a man"

3 7

ALI AIlOU -1 I.UVF

and a " real man " has a lways implied that when necessary

men can take action that breaks the rules, that is above

the law. Patriarchy tells us daily through movies, televi­

sion, and magazines that men of power can do whatever

they want, that it's th is freedom that ma kes them men.

The message given males is that to be honest is to be

"soft." The ability to be dishonest and indifferent to the

consequences makes a male hard, separates the men from

the boys .

John Stoltenberg's book Th e End of Manhood: A Book

for Men of Conscience analyzes the extent to which the

masculine identity offered men as the ideal in patriarchal

culture is one that requires all males to invent and invest

in a false self. From the moment little boys a re taught they

should not cry or express hurt, feelings of loneliness, or

pain, that they must be tough, they are learning how to

mask true feel ings. In worst-case scenarios they are learn­

ing how to not fee l anything ever. T hese lessons are usu­

ally taught to ma les by other males and sexist mothers .

Even boys raised in the most progressive, loving house­

holds, where parents encourage them to express emotions,

learn a different understanding about mascul inity and feel­

ings on the playground, in the classroom, playing sports,

or watching television. They may end up choosing patri­

archal masculinity to be accepted by other boys and af­

firmed by male authority figures .

In his important work Rediscovering Masculinity,

3 8

II () N LSI Y: 1\ I I R U I' I () I. () V L

Victor Seid ler stresses: " \Xlhen we learn to use language as

boys, we very quickly learn how to concea l ourselves

through language . W e learn to 'master' language so that

we can control the world around us . .. . Even though we

learn to blame others for our unhappiness and misery in

relationships we also know at some unspoken level how

our masculinity has been limited and injured as we touch

the hurt and pain of realizing how little we seem to feel

about anything . . . . " Estrangement from feel ings makes it

easier for men to lie because they are often in a trance

state, util izing survival strategIes of asserting manhood

that they learned as boys . This inability to connect wi th

o thers carries with it an inabil ity to assume responsibil ity

for causing pain . This denia l is most evident in cases where

men seek to justify extreme violence toward those less

powerful, usually women , by suggesting they are the ones

who are really victim ized by females .

Regardless of the intensity of the male masquerade, in­

w ardly many men see themselves as the victims of love­

lessness . Like everyone, they learned as children to believe

that love would be present in their lives . Although so

many boys are taught to behave as though love does not

ma tter, in their hearts they yearn fo r it. T hat yearning does

not go aw ay si mp ly because they become men. Lying, as

one form of acting out, is a way they articulate ongoing

rage at the fa ilure of love's promise . To embrace patri ar­

chy, they must actively surrender the longing to love.

3 9

t\ l. l. A B () li T I . () V E

Patriarchal masculinity requires of boys and men not

only that they see themsel ves as more powerful and su­

perior to women but that they do whatever it takes to

maintain their controll ing position . This is one of the rea­

sons men, more so than women, use lying as a means of

gain ing power in relationsh ips . A commonly accepted as­

sumption in a patriarchal culture is that love can be pres­

ent in a situation where one group or ind ividual domi nates

another. Many people believe men can domi nate women

and children yet still be loving. Psychoanalyst Carl J ung

insightfully emphasized the truism that "where the will to

power is paramount love will be lacking." Talk to any

group of women about their relationships with men, no

matter their race or class, and you will hear stories about

the will to power, about the way men use lying, and that

includes withholding information, as a way to control and

subordinate .

I TIS NO accident that greater cultural acceptance of ly­

ing in this society coincided with women gaining greater

social equality. Early on in the feminist movement women

insisted that men had the upper hand , because they usually

controlled the fina nces . Now that women's earning power

has greatly increased (though it is not on a par with

men's), and women are more economically independent,

men who want to maintain dominance must dep loy sub­

tler strategies to colonize and disempower them. Even the

4 0

H (l N I· S 'r Y: Il f . T R \I F: T 0 L U V E

wealthiest professional woman can be "brought down" by

being in a re lationship where she longs to be loved and is

consis tently lied to . To the degree that she trusts her male

companion, lying an d other forms of betrayal will most

likely shatter her se lf-confidence and self-esteem.

Allegiance to male domination requires of men who em­

brace this thinking (and many, if not most, do) that they

maintain dominance over women "by any means neces­

sary." While much cultural attention is given to domest ic

violence and practically everyone agrees it is wrong for men

to hit women as a way of subordinating us, most men use

psychological terrorism as a way to subordinate women.

This is a socially acceptable form of coercion . And lying is

one of the most powerful weapons in this arsenal. When

men lie to women, presenting a false self, the terrible price

they pay to maintain "power over" us is the loss of their ca­

pacity to give and receive Jove . Trust is the foundation of

intimacy. When lies erode trust, genuine connection cannot

take place. While men who dominate others can and do ex­

perience ongoing care, they place a barrier between them­

selves and the experience of love.

All visionary male thinkers challenging male domina­

tion insist that men can return to love only by repudiating

the will to dominate. In The End of Manhood, Stoltenberg

continually emphasizes that men can honor their own self­

hood only through loving justice. He asserts: "Justice be­

tween people is perhaps the most important connection

4 T

,\ L I A Il 0 UT I. () V E

people ca n have. " Loving justice for themselves and others

enables men to break the chokehold of patria rchal mas­

culinity. In the chapter titled "How We Can H ave Better

Relationships with the Women in Our Lives," Stoltenberg

\'>'rites: "Loving Justice between a man and a woman does

not stand a chance when other men's manhood matters

more . When a man has decided to love manhood more

than justice, there are predictable consequences in all his

relationships with women . ... Learning to live as a man

of conscience means deciding that your loyal ty to the peo­

ple whom you love is always more important than what­

ever lingering loyalty you may sometimes feel to other

men 's judgment on your manhood." When men and

women are loyal to ourselves and others, when we love

justice, we understand full y the myriad ways in which ly­

ing diminishes and erodes the possibility of meaningful,

caring connection, that it stands in the way of love .

Since the values and behavior of men are usually the

standards by which everyone in our culture determines

what is acceptable, it is important to understand that con­

don ing lying is an essentia l component of patriarchal

thinking for everyone. M en are by no means the only

group who use li es as a way of gaining power over others.

Indeed, if patriarchal mascul inity estranges men from their

selfhood, it is equally true that women who embrace pa ­

triarchal femininity , the insistence that females should act

as though they are weak, incapable o f rational thought,

4 2

HONESTY: BE TRUE TO LOVE

dumb, silly, are also socialized to wear a mask-to lie.

This is one of the primary themes in Lerner's The Dance

of Deception. With shrewd insight she calls women to ac­

count for our participation in structures of pretense and

lies-particularly within family life . Women are often

comfortable lying to men in order to manipulate them to

give us things we feel we want or deserve. We may lie to

bolster a male's self-esteem. These lies may take the form

of pretending to feel emotions we do not feel to pretending

levels of emotional vulnerability and neediness that are

false.

Heterosexual women are often schooled by other women

in the art of lying to men as a way to manipulate. Many

examples of the support females receive for lying concern

the desire to mate and bear children. When I longed to

have a baby and my male partner at the time was not

ready, I was stunned by the number of women who en­

couraged me to disregard his feelings, to go ahead without

telling him. They felt it was fine to deny a child the right

to be desired by both female and male biological parents.

(No deception is involved when a woman has a child with

a sperm donor, as in such a case there is no visible male

parent to reject or punish an unwanted child.) It disturbed

me that women I respected did not take the need for male

parenting seriously or believe that it was as important for

a man to want to parent as a woman. Whether we like it

or not we still live in a world where children want to

4 3

AI L A];Oll T LOVE

know who their fathers are and, when they can, go in

search of absent fathers. I could not imagine bringing a

child into this world whose father might reject him or her

because he did not desire a child in the first place.

Growing up in the fift ies, in the days before adequate

birth control, every female was acutely conscious of the

way unwanted pregnancies could alter the course of a

young woman's life . Still, it was clear then that there were

girls who hoped fo r pregnancy to emotionally bind indi­

vidual males to them forever. I thought those days were

long gone. Yet even in this era of social equality between

the sexes I hear stories of females choosing to get pregnant

when a relationship is rocky as a way of forcing the male

to remain in their life or in the hope of forcing marriage.

More than we might think, some men feel extremely

bound to a woman when she gives birth to a child they

have fathered . The fact that men succumb to being lied to

and manipulated when the issue is biological parenting

does not make it right or just. Men who accept being lied

to and manipulated are not only abdicating their power,

they are setting up a situation where they can "blame"

women or justify woman-hating.

This is another case where lying is used to gain power

over someone, to hold them against their will. Harriet Ler­

ner reminds readers tha t honesty is only one aspect of

truth telling-that it is equated with "moral excellence:

4 4

IIONESTY : BE TRUE TO I.OVF

an absence of deception or frau d." The mask of patriar­

chal "feminini ty" often renders women's deceptions ac­

ceptable. However, when women lie we lend credence to

age-old sexist stereotypes that suggest women are inher­

ently, by virtue of being female, less capable of truth tell­

ing. The origins of this sexist stereotype extend back to

ancient stories of Adam and Eve, of Eve's willingness to

lie even to God.

Often, when information is withheld by women and

men, protection of privacy is the justification. In our cul­

ture privacy is often confused with secrecy. Open, honest,

truth-telling individuals value privacy. We all need spaces

where we can be alone with thoughts and feelings-where

we can experience healthy psychological autonomy and

can choose to share when we want to . Keeping secrets is

usually about power, about hiding and concealing infor­

mation . Hence, many recovery programs stress that "you

are only as sick as your secrets ." When a former boy­

friend 's sister shared with me a carefully guarded family

secret regarding incest , which he did not know about, I

responded by requesting that she tell him. If she didn't, I

would. I felt that keeping this information a secret from

him would violate the commitment we had made as a cou­

ple to be open and honest with each other. By withholding

this information from him, joining his mother and sisters,

I would have been participating in family dysfunction.

4 5

ALL ABOLJT LOVE

Sharing with him affirmed my loyalty and respect for his

capacity to cope with reality.

While privacy strengthens all our bonds, secrecy weak­

ens and damages connection. Lerner points out that we

do not usually "know the emotional costs of keeping a

secret" until the truth is disclosed. Usually, secrecy in­

volves lying. And lying is always the setting for potential

betrayal and violation of trust .

Widespread cultural acceptance of lying is a primary rea­

son many of us will never know love. It is impossible to

nurture one's own or another's spiritual growth when the

core of one's being and identity is shrouded in secrecy and

lies. Trusting that another person always intends your

good, having a core foundation of loving practice, cannot

exist within a context of deception. It is this truism that

makes all acts of judicious withholding major moral dilem­

mas . More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew

a commitment to truth telling. Such a commitment is diffi­

cult when lying is deemed more acceptable than telling the

truth . Lying has become so much the accepted norm that

people lie even when it would be simpler to tell the truth.

Practically every mental health care practictioner, from

the most erudite psychoanalysts to untrained self-help gu­

rus, tell us that it is infinitely more fulfilling and we are

all saner if we tell the truth, yet most of us are not rushing

to stand up and be counted among the truth tellers . 1n-

4 6

HONESTY : BE [RUF TO IOVI .

deed, as someone committed to being honest in daily life

I experience the constant drag of being seen as a "freak"

for telling the truth, even when I speak truthfully about

simple matters. If a friend gives me a gift and asks me to

tell him or her whether or not I like it, I will respond

honestly and judiciously; that is to say, I will speak the

truth in a positive, caring manner. Yet even in this situa­

tion, the person who asks for honesty will often express

annoyance when given a truthful response.

In today's world we are taught to fear the truth, to be­

lieve it always hurts. We are encouraged to see honest

people as naive, as potentia l losers. Bombarded with cul­

tural propaganda ready to instill in all of us the notion

that lies are more important, that truth does not matter,

we are all potential victims. Consumer culture in particu­

lar encourages lies. Advertising is one of the cultural me­

diums that has most sanctioned lying . Keeping people in

a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens

the marketplace economy. Lovelessness is a boon to con­

sumerism. And lies strengthen the world of predatory ad­

vertising. Our passive acceptance of lies in public life,

particularly via the mass media, upholds and perpetuates

lying in our private lives. In our public life there would be

nothing for tabloid journalism to expose if we lived our

lives out in the open, committed to truth telling. Com­

mitment to knowing love can protect us by keeping LlS

4 7

ALL ABOUT LOVF

wedded to a life of truth, willing to share ourselves openly

and full y in both private and public li fe .

To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and

to others . Creating a false se lf to mask fears and insecur­

ities has become so common that many of us forget who

we are and what we feel underneath the pretense. Break­

ing through this denial is always the first step in uncov­

ering our longing to be honest and clear. Lies and secrets

burden us and cause stress. When an individual has always

lied, he has no awareness that truth telling can take away

this heavy burden. To know th is he must let the lies go.

When femin ism first began, women talked openly about

our desires to know men better, to love them for who they

really are. We talked about our desires to be loved for

who we really are (i.e. , to be accepted in our physical and

spiritual beings rather than feeling we had to make our­

selves into a fantasy self to become the object of male

desire ). And we urged men to be true to themselves, to

express themselves. Then when men began to share their

thoughts and fee lings, some women cou ld not cope. They

wanted the old lies and pretenses to be back in place. In

the seventies, a popular Sylvia greeting card showed a

woman seated in front of a fortune-teller gazing into a

crystal ball. The caption on the front of the card read:

"He never talks about his feelings." On the inside the re­

sponse was: "Next year at 2:00 P.M . men will start talking

about their feel ings . And at 2 :05 women all over America

4 8

HONI-.S TY: 111-: TRUL [0 r.OVF

will be sorry." When we hear another person's thoughts,

beliefs, and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to

them our perceptions of who they are. It is harder to be

manipulative. At times women find it d ifficult to hear

what many men have to say when what they tell us does

not conform to our fantasies of who they are or who we

want them to be.

The wounded child inside many males is a boy who,

when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal

sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to

claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many

females is a girl who was taught from early childhood on

that she must become something other than herself,

deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please

others . When men and women punish each other for truth

telling we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be

loving we wiliingiy hear each other's truth and, most im­

portant, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may

make people feel better, but they do not help them to

know love.

4 9

Four

COMMITMENT:

LET LOVE BE LOVE IN ME

Commitment is inherent in any genuinely loving re­

lationship. Anyone who is tru ly concerned for the

spiritual growth of another knows, consciously or in­

stinctively, that he or she can significantly foster that

growth only through a relationship of constancy.

- M. SCOTT PECK

COM M TTME NT TO TR UTll telling lays the gmund­

work for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat

of love . When we can see ourselves as we truly are and

accept ourselves, we build the necessary foundation for

self-love. We have all heard the maxim "If you do not

love yourself, you will be unable to love anyone else." It

sounds good. Yet more often than not we feel some degree

of confusion when we hear this statement. The confusion

arises because most people who think they are not lovable

have this perception because at some point in their lives

they were socialized to see themselves as unlovable by

forces outside their control. We are not born knowing

how to love anyone, either ourselves or somebody else.

However, we are born able to respond to care. As we

grow we can give and receive atten tion, affection, and joy.

Whether we learn how to love ourselves and others will

depend on the presence of a loving environment.

5 3

ALl. ABour l.OVE

Self-love cannot flourish in isolation. It is no easy task

to be self-lov ing. Simple axioms that make self-love sound

easy only make matters worse . It leaves many people won­

dering why, if it is so easy, they continue to be trapped

by feelings of low self-esteem or self-hatred. Using a work­

ing definition of love that tells us it is the action we take

on behalf of our own or another's spiritual growth pro­

vides us with a beginning blueprint for working on the

issue of self-love. When we see love as a combination of

trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and respon­

sibility, we can work on developing these qualities or, if

they are already a part of who we are, we can learn to

extend them to ourselves .

Many people find it helpful to critically exam me the

past, particularly childhood, to chart their internalization

of messages that they were not worthy, not enough, that

they were crazy, stupid, monstrous, and so on. Simply

learning how we have acquired feelings of worthlessness

rarely enables us to change things; it is usually only one

stage in the process. I, like so many other people, have

found it useful to examine negative thinking and behav­

ioral patterns learned in childhood, particularly those

shaping my sense of self and identity. However, this pro­

cess alone did not ensure self-recovery. It was not enough.

I share this because it is far too easy to stay stuck in simply

describing, telling one's story over and over again, which

5 4

COM 1\1 I T MEN T: L E·I I 0 V I: Il F l.O V J I N 1\1 E

can be a way of holding on to grief about the past or

holding on to a narrative that places blame on others .

While it is important for us to understand the origins

of fragile self-esteem, it is also possible to bypass this stage

(identifying when and where we received negative sociali­

zation) and still create a foundation for building self-love .

Individuals who bypass this stage tend to move on to the

next stage, which is actively introducing into our lives con­

structive life-affirming thought patterns and behavior.

Whether a person remembers the deta ils of being abused

is not important. When the consequence of that abuse is

a feeling of worthlessness, they can still engage in a pro­

cess of self-recovery by finding ways to affirm self-worth.

The wounded heart learns self-love by first overcoming

low self-esteem. Nathaniel Branden' s lengthy work Six

Pillars of Self-Esteem highlights important dimensions

of self-esteem, " the practice of living consciously, self­

acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, living pur­

posefully and the pract ice of personal integrity. " Living

consciously means we think critically about ourselves and

the world we live in . We dare to ask ourselves the basic

questions who, what, when, where, and why. Answering

these questions usually provides us with a level of aware­

ness that enlightens. Branden contends: "To live con­

sciously means to seek to be aware of everything that bears

on our actions, purposes, values, and goals-to the best

5 5

of our ability, whatever that ability may be-and to be­

have in accordance with that which we see and know."

To live consciously we have to engage in critical reflection

about the world we live in and know most intimately.

Usually it is th ro ugh reflection that individua ls who

have not accepted themselves make the choice to stop lis­

tening to negative voices, within and outside the self, that

constantly reject and devalue them. Affirmations work for

anyone striving for self-acceptance. Although I had for

years been interested in therapeutic modes of healing and

self-help, affirmations always seemed to me a bit corny.

My sister, who was then working as a therapist in the fie ld

of chemical dependency, encouraged me to give affirma­

tions a try to see if I would experience any concrete

changes in my outlook. I wrote affirmations relevant to

my daily life and began to repeat them in the morning as

part of my daily meditations. At the top of my list was

the declaration : "I'm breaking with old patterns and mov­

ing forward with my life ." I not only fou nd them to be a

tremendous energy boost- a way to kick off the day by

my accentuating the positive- I a lso found it useful to

repeat them during the day if I felt particularly stressed or

was falling into the abyss of negative thinking. Affirma­

tions helped restore my emotional equilibrium.

Self-acceptance is hard for many of us . There is a voice

inside that is constantly judging, first ourselves and then

others . That voice en joys the indulgence of an endless nega-

- 6 )

C O" \ .'v\ \ T \ .( F " T: L F. T l. (l V F \1 F l. () V \.: \ N ,\\ I

rive critique. Because we have learned to believe negativity

is more realistic , it appears more real than any positive

voice. Once we begin to replace negative th inking with

positive th inki ng, it becomes utterly clear that, far from

being realistic, negative thinking is absolutely d isenabling.

When we are positive we not onl y accept and affirm our­

selves, we are able to affirm and accept others.

The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we

are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives. Com­

menting on this third pillar of self-esteem, Branden defines

self-responsibility as the will ingness " to take responsibil ity

for my actions and the attainment of my goals . .. for my

life and well-being." Taking responsibility does not mean

that we deny the reality of institutionalized injustice. For

example, rac ism, sex ism, an d homophobia all create bar­

riers and concrete incidents of discrimination. Simply tak­

ing responsibility does not mean that we can prevent

discrimi natory acts from happening. But we can choose

how we respond to acts of injustice. Taking responsibility

means that in the face of barriers we still have the capacity

to invent our lives, to shape our destinies in ways that

maximize our wel l-being. Every day we practice this shape

shifting to cope with realities we cannot easily change.

Many women are married to men who were unsuppor­

tive when they decided to further their educations. M ost

of these women did not leave the men in their lives,

they engaged in constructive strategies of resistance.

5 7

,\LL ,-\BOUT LOVE

more education than he did. Yet she wanted to reenter the ~ ;1.1

workforce and needed an advanced degree to do so. She ~

made the choice to take responsibility fo r her needs and

desires, believing it would also enhance the well-being of

her family . Returning to work boosted her self-esteem and

changed the passive-aggressive rage and depression that

had developed as a consequence of her isolation and stag­

nation. M aking this decision and finding ways to realize

it was not an easy process, however. Her husband and

children were often disgruntled when her independence

forced them to accept more household responsibility. In

the long run, everyone benefited . And it goes without say­

ing that these changes boosted her self-esteem in ways that

showed her how self-love made it possible to extend her­

self in a constructive way to others. She was happier and

so were those around her.

In order to makes these changes she had to make use

of another vital aspect of self-esteem, "self-assertiveness,"

defined by Branden as "the willingness to stand up for

myself, to be who I am openly, to treat myself with respect

in all human encounters." Since many of us were shamed

in childhood either in our families of origin or in school

settings, a learned pattern of going along with the pro­

gram and not making a fuss is the course of action we

most frequently choose as a way to avoid conflict. As chil-

5 8

c:OM;'vl1TMENT : I ET LOVE BE LOVE IN ME

dren, conflict was often the setting fo r put-downs and Im­

miliation, the place where we were shamed . Our attempts

at self-assertion failed as an adequate defense . Many of us

learned that passivity lessened the possibil ity of attack.

Sexist socializa tion teaches females tha t self -asserti veness

is a th reat to femininity. Accepting this faul ty logic lays

the groundwork for low self-esteem. The fear of being self­

assertive usually surfaces in women who have been trained

to be good gir ls or dutiful daughters. In our childhood

home my brother was never punished fo r talking back.

Asserting his opinions was a positive sign of manhood.

When my sisters and I voiced our opinions we were told

by our parenting adults that this was negative and unde­

sirable behavior. We were told, especially by our dad, that

female self-assertion was not feminine . We did not listen

to these warnings . Even though ours was a patriarchal

household, the fact that females far outnumbered the two

males, my dad and my brother, made it safe for us to

speak our m inds, to talk back. Luckily, by the time we

were young adults the feminist movement had come along

and validated that having a voice and being self-assertive

was necessary for building self-esteem.

One reason women have traditionally gossiped more

than men is because gossip has been a social interaction

wherein women have felt comfortable stating what they

really think and feel. Often, rather than asserting what

they think at the appropriate moment, women say what

5 9

.'\J.L ABUUT J. OVE

th ey think will please the listener. La ter, they gossip, stat­

ing at that moment their true thoughts. This division be­

tween a fal se self invented to please others and a more

authentic self need not exist when we cultivate positive

self-esteem.

THE F EMINIST M OVEMENT really helped women

understand the personal power tha t is gained through

posi tive self-assertiveness. Gloria Steinem's best-seller

Revolution from With in cautioned women about the dan­

ger of achieving success without doing the necessary

groundwork for self-love and self-esteem. She found that

achieving women who still suffered internalized self-hatred

invariably acted out in ways that undermined their success .

And if the self-hating successful person did not act out she

may have lived a life of private desperation, unable to tell

anyone success does not, in fact, reverse crippled self­

esteem. To complicate matters, women may feel the need to

pretend that they are self-loving, to assert confidence and

power to the outside world, and as a consequence they feel

psychologically conflicted and disengaged from their true

being. Shamed by the feeling that they can never let anyone

know who they really are, they may choose isolation and

aloneness for fear of being unmasked .

This is true of men as well. When powerful men reach

the height of personal achievement in their careers, they

6 0

COMMITMENT: LET LOVE B E LOVE IN ME

often undermine all they have worked for by engaging in

self-destructive behavior. Men who reside at the bottom

of our nation's economic totem pole do this and so do

men at the top . President Clinton engaged in deceitful be­

havior, betraying both his personal commitments to his

family as well as his political commitment to be a paragon

of American values to the people of this country. He did

so when his popularity was at an all-time high . Having

spent much of his life achieving against the odds, his ac­

tions expose a fundamental flaw in his self-esteem. Al­

though he is a white male, Ivy League- educated and

economically well off, privileged, with all the accompa­

nying perks, his irresponsible actions were a way of un­

masking, of showing to the world that he really was not

the "good guy" he was pretending to be. He created the

context for a public shaming that no doubt mirrors mo­

ments of childhood shaming when some authority figure

in his life made him feel he was worthless and that he

would never be worthy no matter what he did. Anyone

who suffers from low self-esteem can learn by his exam­

ple. If we succeed without confronting and changing

shaky foundations of low self-esteem rooted in contempt

and hatred, we will falter along the way.

I TIS NO accident that "living purposely" is the sixth

element of self-esteem. According to Branden it entails

6 I

ALI ABOUT' IOVI'

taking responsibility for consciously creating goals, iden­

tifying the actions necessary to achieve them, making sure

our behavior is in alignment with our goals, and paying

attention to the outcome of our actions so that we see

whether they are leading us where we want to go . Most

people are concerned about living purposefully when it

comes to choosing the work we do . Unfortunately, many

workers feel they have very little freedom of choice when

it comes to work . Most people do not grow up learning

that the work we choose to do will have a major impact

on our capacity to be self-loving.

Work occupies much of our time. Doing work we

hate assaults our self-esteem and self-confidence. Yet most

workers cannot do the work they love. But we can all en­

hance our capacity to live purposely by learning how to ex­

perience satisfaction in whatever work we do. We find that

satisfaction by giving any job total commitment. When I

had a teaching job I hated (the kind of job where you long

to be sick so you have an excuse for not going to work), the

only way I could ease the severity of my pain was to give my

absolute best. This strategy enabled me to live purposely.

Doing a job well, even if we do not enjoy what we are do­

ing, means that we leave it with a feeling of well-being, our

self-esteem intact. That self-esteem aids us when we go in

search of a job that can be more fulfilling .

Throughout my life I have endeavored to not only do

work I enjoy but to work with individuals I respect, like,

6 2

COM\ilTII1ENT: LET LOVF BE LOVE IN ME

or love. When I first declared my desire to work in a loving

environment, friends acted as though I had truly lost my

mind . To them, love and work did not go together. But I

was convinced that I would work better in a work environ­

ment shaped by an ethic of love. Today, as the Buddhist

concept of "right livel ihood" is more widely understood,

more people embrace the belief that work that enhances

our spiritual well-being strengthens our capacity to love.

And when we work with love we create a loving working

environment. Whenever I enter an office, I can immediately

sense by the overall atmosphere and mood whether the

workers like what they do. Marsha Sinetar writes about

this concept in her book D o What You Love, the Money

Will Follow as a way to encourage readers to take the risk

of choosing work they care about and therefore learning

through experience the meaning of right livelihood.

While there are many meaningful insights in Sinetar 's

book, it is equally true that we can do what we love and

money will not always follow . Although this is utterly dis­

appointing, it can also offe r us the experiential awareness

that doing what you love may be more important th an

making money. Sometimes, as has been the case in my life ,

I have had to work at a job that is less than enjoyable in

order to have the means to do the work I love. At one

point in a very mixed job career I worked as a cook in a

club. I hated the noise and the smoke. But working nights

left me free to write in the day, to do the work I truly

6 3

Al.1. ,\llOlir I.()VI'

wanted to do . Each experience enhanced the value of the

other. My nighttime work helped me relish the quiet se­

renity of my day and enjoy the alone time so essential to

writing.

Whenever possible, it is best to seek work we love and to

avoid work we hate. But sometimes we learn what we need

to avoid by doing it . Individuals who are able to be eco­

nomically self-sufficient doing what they love are blessed.

Their experience serves as a beacon to all of us, showing us

the ways right livelihood can strengthen self-love, ensuring

peace and contentment in the lives we lead beyond work .

Often , workers believe that if their home life is good, it

does not matter if they feel dehumanized and exploited on

the job. Many jobs undermine self- love because they re­

quire that workers constantly prove their worth. Individu­

als who are dissatisfied and miserable on the job bring this

negative energy home . Clearly, much of the violence in

domestic life, both physical and verbal abuse, is linked to

job misery. We can encourage friends and loved ones to

move toward greater self-love by supporting them in any

effort to leave work that assaults their well-being.

Folks who are out of the paid workforce, women and

men who do unpaid work in the home, as well as all other

happi ly unemployed people, are often doing what they

want to do . While they are not rewarded by an income,

their day-to-day life often provides more satisfaction than

it would if they worked at a high-paying job in a stressful

6 4

(' () :vl :VI I T :\\ [' :\ T: L F -[ I () V F B \' I () V F \ N M E

and dehumanizing environment. Satisfied homemakers,

both women and the ra re men who have chosen to stay

home, have a lot to teach us all about the JOY that comes

from self-determination. T hey are their own bosses, set­

ting the te rms of their labor an d the measure of the ir re­

ward . More than any of us, they have the freedom to

develop right livelihood.

M ost of us did not learn when we were yo ung that our

capacity to be se lf- loving wou ld be shaped by the work

we do and whether that work enhances our well-being .

No wonder then th at we have become a nation where so

many workers feel bad. Jobs depress the spirit . Rather

than enhancing self-esteem, work is perceived as a drag,

a negative necessity . Bringing love into the work environ­

ment can create the necessary transform ation that can

make any job we do, no matter how menial , a place where

workers can express the best of themselves. When we

work with love we renew the spirit; tha t renewal is an act

of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It 's not what you do

but how you do it .

In The Knitting Sutra, Susan Lydon describes the labor

of knitting as a freely chosen craft that enhances her

awareness of the va lue of right livelihood, sharing: "What

I found in th is tiny domestic world of knitting is endless;

it fun s broader and deeper than anyone might imagine. It

is infinite and seemingly inexhaustible in its capacity to

inspire, excite, and p rovoke creative ins ight." Lydon sees

6 5

A I. I A K 0 ur L 0 V E

the world that we have traditionally thought of as

"wom an's \vork" as a place to discover godliness through

the act of creating domes tic bli ss. A blissful household is

one where love can flour ish.

Creating domestic bliss is especially useful for individu­

a ls living alone who are just learning to be self-lovi ng.

When we intentiona lly strive to make our homes p laces

where we are ready to give and receive love, every object

we place there enhances our well-being. I create themes

for my different homes . My flat in the city has the theme

"love's meeting place." As a small-town person moving to

a big city I fou nd that I needed my environment to tru ly

feel like a sanctuary. Since my one-bedroom flat is so

much smaller than the places I had been acc ustomed to

living in, I decided to take only objects I truly loved-the

things I fe lt I coul d not do without. It is amazing how

much stuff you can just let go of. My country place has a

desert theme. I call it "soledad hermosa, " beautiful soli­

tude . I go there to be quiet and still and to experience the

divine, to be renewed.

OF ALL THE chapters for this book, this one was the

most difficult to write . When I ta lked with fr iends and ac­

quaintances about self-love I was surprised to see how

many of us feel troubled by the notion, as though the very

idea implies too much narcissism or selfishness. W e all need

6 6

COMMITMENT: LET LOVE BE LOVE I N ME

to rid ourselves of misguided notions about self-love. We

need to stop fearfully equating it with self-centeredness and

selfishness.

Self-love is the foundation of our loving practice . With­

out it our other efforts to love fail. Giving ourselves love we

provide our inner being with the opportunity to have the

unconditional love we may have always longed to receive

from someone else. Whenever we interact with others, the

love we give and receive is always necessarily conditional.

Although it is not impossible, it is very difficult and rare for

us to be able to extend unconditional love to others, largely

because we cannot exercise control over the behavior of

someone else and we cannot predict or utterly control our

responses to their actions. We can, however, exercise con­

trol over our own actions . We can give ourselves the

unconditional love that is the grounding for sustained ac­

ceptance and affirmation. When we give this precious gift

to ourselves, we are able to reach out to others from a

place of fulfillment and not from a place of lack .

One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give

ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving

from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my

over-forty body, saw myself as too fat , too this, or too

that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would

give me the gift of being loved as I am. It is si lly, isn 't it,

that I would dream of someone else offering to me the

6 7

ALL ABOUT LOVE

acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from my­

self. Th is was a moment when the maxim "You can never

love anybody if you are unable to love yourself" made

clear sense . And I add, "Do not expect to receive the love

from someone else you do not give yourself."

In an ideal world we would all learn in childhood to

love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth

and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our

light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there

is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter

how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the

spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call

us back to the first memory of being the life force inside

a dark place waiting to be born-waiting to see the light.

6 8

Fi ve

SPIRITUALITY:

DIVINE LOVE

As a woman and a lover, however, I am moved by

the sight of my Beloved. Where He is, I want to be.

What He suffers , I want to share . Who He is, I want

to be: crucified for love.

- S AIN T TE R ESA OF AV I LA

LIVING LIFE IN touch with divine spirit lets us

see the light of love in all living beings. T hat light is a

resurrecting life force. A culture that is dead to love can

only be resurrected by spiritual awakening. On the surface

it appears that our nation has gone so far down the road

of secular individua lism, worshiping the twin gods of

money and power, that there seems to be no place for

spiritual life . Yet an overwhelming ma jority of Americans

who express fa ith In Christianity, Judaism, Is lam,

Buddhism, or other rel igious tradi tions clearly bel ieve

that spiritual life is important. The crisis of American life

does not seem to be generated by a lack of in terest in

spirituality. However, this interest is constantly co-opted

by the powerful forces of materialism and hedonistic con -

sumensm.

In the conclusion to his insightful work T he Art of Lov­

ing, written in the mid-fifties but still relevant to today's

7 I

ALl. A B () lJl I. U V E

world, psychoanalyst Eric h Fromm courageously calls at­

tention to the reality that " th e principle underl ying capi­

tal istic society and the principle of love are incompatible."

He contends: "Our soc iety is run by a ma nagerial bu­

reaucracy, by professional politicians; people are moti­

vated by mass suggestion, their aim is producing more and

consuming more, as purposes in themselves ." The cultural

emphasis on endless consumption deflects attention from

spiritual hunger. We are endlessly bombarded by messages

telling us that our every need can be satisfied by material

increase . Artist Barbara Kruger created a work proclaim­

ing "I shop therefore I am" to show the way consumerism

has taken over mass consciousness, making people think

they are what they possess. W hile the zeal to possess in­

tensifies, so does the sense of spiritual emptiness. Because

we are spiritually empty we try to fill up on consumerism.

We may not have enough love but we can always shop.

Our national spiritual hunger springs from a keen

awareness of the emotional lack in our lives. It IS a re­

sponse to lovelessness. Going to church or temple has not

satisfied this hunger, surfacing from deep within our so uls.

Organized religion has fa iled to satisfy spiritual hunger

because it has accommodated secular demands, interpret­

ing spiritual life in ways that uphold the values of a

production-centered commodity culture . This is as true of

the traditional Christian church as it is of N ew Age spiri­

tuality. It is no accident that so many famous New Age

7 2

SPIRITUALITY : DIVINE LOVE

spiritual teachers link their teachings to a metaphysics of

daily life that extolls the virtues of wealth, privilege, and

power. For example, consider New Age logic, which sug­

gests that the poor have chosen to be poor, have chosen

their suffering. Such thinking removes from all of us who

are privi leged the burden of accountability. Rather than

calling us to embrace love and greater community, it ac­

tually requires an investment in the logic of alienation and

est rangement.

The basic inte rdependency of life is ignored so that sep­

arateness and individual gain can be deified. Religious fun­

damentalism is often represented as authentic spiritual

practice and given a level of mass media exposure that

countercultural relig ious thought and practice never re­

ceive. Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Mus­

lim, or any fa ith, shape and interpret re ligious thought to

make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status

quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify sup­

porting imperialism, militarism, sexism, rac ism, homo­

phobia. They deny the unifying message of love that is at

the heart of every major religious tradition.

No wonder then that so many people who claim to be­

lieve in rel igious teachings do not allow their habits of

being to reflect these beliefs . For example, the Christian

church remains one of the most racially segregated insti­

tutions in our society. In Martin Luther King, Jr.'s letter

to American Christians, in which he assumes the persona

7 3

;\1. 1. Allll U-1 L. ()VE

of the biblical apostle Pau l, he admonishes believers for

supporting segregation : "Americans, I must urge you to

be rid of every aspect of segregation. Segregation is a bla­

tant denial of the unity which we have in Christ. It sub­

sti tutes an 'I-it' relationsh ip for the 'I-thou' relationship,

and relegates persons to the status of things . It scars the

soul and degrades the personality ... . It destroys com­

munity and makes brotherhood impossible." This is only

one example of the way in which organized religious wor­

ship corrupts and violates religious principles about how

we should live in the world and how we should act toward

one another. Imagine how diffe rent our lives wo uld be if

all the individuals who claim to be Christians, or who

claim to be religious, were setting an example for everyone

by being loving.

Blatant misuses of spirituality and religious fa ith could

lead us to despair about spiritual life if we were not si­

multaneously w itnessing a genuine concern for spiritual

awakening expressed counterculturally . Whether it is the

American Buddhists working in solidarity to free T ibet or

the many Christian-based organizations that provide sup­

port in the way of food and shel ter fo r the needy globally,

these embodiments of loving practice renew our hope and

restore the soul. All around the world liberation theology

offers the exploited and oppressed a vision of spiritual

freedom that is linked to struggles to end domination.

A little more than ten years after Fromm first published

7 4

S PIRITUALI TY : DIV I NE LOV F

The Art of Loving, M artin Luther King, Jr.'s collection of

sermons Strength to Love was published. The major focus

of these talks was the celebration of love as a spiritual

force that unites and binds all life. Like Fromm's earlier

work, these essays championed spiritual life, critiquing

capitalism, materialism, and the violence used to enforce

exploitation and dehumanization. In a 1967 lecture op­

posing war King declared: "When I speak of love I am

not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I

am speaking of that fo rce which all of the great religions

have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love

is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to

ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish­

Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully

summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: 'Let us love

one another, for love is God and everyone that loveth is

born of God and knoweth God.' " Throughout his life

King was a prophet of love. In the late seventies, when it

was no longer cool to talk about spirituality, I found my­

self turning again and again to his work and to the work

of Thomas M erton . As religious seekers and thinkers, both

men focused attention on the practice of love as a means

of spiritua l fulfillment.

Extolling the transformative power of love in his essay

"Love and Need," Merton writes: "Love is, in fact an

intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness , a whole­

ness of life .... Life curves upward to a peak of intensity,

7 5

ALL AflOlIT LOVE

a high point of value and meaning, at which all its latent

creative possibility go into action and the person tran­

scends himself or herself in encounter, response, and com­

munion with another. It is for this that we came into the

world- this communion and self-transcendence. We do

not become fully human until we give ourselves to each

other in love." The teachings about love offered by

Fromm, King, and Merton differ from much of today's

writing. There is always an emphasis in their work on love

as an active force that should lead us into greater com­

munion with the world. In their work, loving practice is

not aimed at simply giving an individual greater life sat­

isfaction; it is extolled as the primary way we end domi­

nation and oppression. This important politicization of

love is often absent from today's writing.

Much as I enjoy popular New Age commentary on love,

I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by

spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual

self-improvement and so little to the practice of love

within the context of community. Packaged as a com­

modity, spirituality becomes no different from an exercise

program. While it may leave the consumer fee ling better

about his or her life, its power to enhance our communion

with ourselves and others in a sustained way is inhibited.

Commenting on the value of an engaged life in The Active

Life: Wisdom for Work, Creativity, and Caring, Parker

Palmer writes: "To be fully alive is to act .. . . I understand

7 6

SP IRIT U ALIT Y : D IVIN E LOVE

action to be any way that we can co-create reality with

other beings and the Spirit. .. . Action, like a sacrament,

is the vis ible form of an invisible spirit, an outward man­

ifestation of an inward power. But as we act, we not only

express what is in us and help give shape to the world;

we also receive what is outside us, and reshape out inner

selves." A commitment to a spiritual life requires us to do

more than read a good book or go on a restful retreat. It

requires conscious practice, a willingness to unite the way

we think with the way we act.

Spiritual life is first and foremost about commitment to

a way of thinking and behaving that honors principles of

inter-being and interconnectedness. When I speak of the

spiritual, I refer to the recognition within everyone that

there is a place of mystery in our lives where forces that

are beyond human desire or will alter circumstances

and/or guide and direct us . I call these forces "divine

spirit." When we choose to lead a spirit-filled life, we rec­

ognize and celebrate the presence of transcendent spirits .

Some people call this presence soul, God, the Beloved,

higher consciousness, or higher power. Still others say that

this force is what it is because it cannot be named. To

them it is simply the spirit moving in us and through us .

A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we em­

brace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our

true destiny. Despite overwhelming pressure to conform

to the culture of lovelessness, we still seek to know love.

7 7

ALL ,-\BOUT LOVE

T hat seeking is itself a manifestation of divine spirit. Life­

threatening nihilism abounds in contemporary culture,

crossing the boundaries of race, class, gender, and nation­

ality. At some point it affects all our lives. Everyone I know

is at times brought low by feelings of depression and

despair about the state of the world. Whether it is the on­

going worldwide presence of violence expressed by the

persistence of man-made war, hunger and starvation,

the day-to-day reality of violence, the presence of life­

threatening diseases that cause the unexpected deaths of

friends, comrades, and loved ones, there is much that

brings everyone to the brink of despair. Knowing love or

the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from

falling into that sea of despair. In A Path with Heart, Jack

Kornfield shares: "The longing for love and the movement

of love is underneath all of our activities."

Spirituality and spiritual life give us the strength to

love. It is rare for individuals to choose a life in the spirit,

one that honors the sacred dimensions of everyday life

when they have had no contact with traditional religious

thought or practice. Spiritual teachers are important

guides who provide a catalyst for our spiritual awakening.

Another source of spiritual growth is communion and fe l­

lowship with like-minded souls. Spiritual seekers let their

light shine so that others may see not only to give service

by example but also to constantly remind themselves that

spirituality is most gloriously embodied in our actions-

7 8

1 1

S PIRIT Ui\ LI "lY: DI V INE I.OVE

our habits of being. lnsightfully Jack Kornfield explains:

"Ali other spiritua l teachings are in vain if we cannot love.

Even the most exalted states and the most exceptional

spiritual accomplishments are unimportant if we cannot

be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, if, with

our hearts, we cannot touch one another and the life we

have been given. What matters is how we live."

For many of us, church was the place where we first

heard a counternarrarive of love, one that differed from

the confused messages about love learned in dysfunctional

fam ilies. The mystical dimensions of Christian faith (the

belief that we are all one, that love is all) presented to me

as a child in the church were the space of redemption. At

church I learned not only to understand that God is love,

I learned also that children were special in the heart and

mind of divine spirit. Dreaming of becoming a writer,

valuing the life of the mind above all thi ngs, it was espe­

cially awesome to learn by heart passages from First Co­

rinthians, "the love chapter." From childhood on I have

often reflected on the passage that proclaims: "If I speak

with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,

I am a noisy gong or a clangi ng cymbal. And if I have

prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all

knowledge, and if I have all fa ith so as to remove moun­

tains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all

I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned , but have

not love, I gain nothing ." Throughout my graduate school

7 9

.\IL ';'1l0U -j LOVE

years, as I worked hard to finish my doctorate, striving to

mainta in a commitment to spiritual life in a world tha t

did not value the spiritual, I returned to these lessons

about the primacy of love. The wisdom they convey kept

me from hardening my heart. Remaining open to love was

crucial to my academic survival. When the environment

you live in and know most intimately does not place value

on loving, a spiritua l life provides a place of solace and

renewal.

Significantly, the gammg of knowledge about SpIrItu­

ality is not the same as a commitment to a spiritual life .

Jack Kornfield testifies : "In undertaking a spiritual life,

what matters is simple: We must make certain our path is

connected with our heart . In beginning a genuine spiritual

journey, we have to stay much closer to home, to focus

directly on what is right here in front of us, to make sure

that our path is connected with our deepest love." When

we begin to experience the sacred in our everyday lives we

bring to mundane tasks a quality of concentration and

engagement that lifts the spirit. We recognize divine spirit

everywhere . This is especially true when we face difficul­

ties . So many people turn to spiritual thinking only when

they experience difficulties, hoping that the sorrow or pain

will just miraculously disappear. Usually, they find that

the place of suffering-the place where we are broken in

spirit, when accepted and embraced, is also a place of

peace and possibility . Our sufferings do not magically end;

R 0

\I'IRIT U AI.ITY: DIVINE LOVE

instead we are able to wisely alchemically recycle them.

They become the abundant waste that we use to make

new growth possible . That is why biblical scripture ad­

monishes us to "count it all joy-when we meet various

trials ." Learning to embrace our suffering is one of the

gifts offered by spiritual life and practice .

Spiritual practice does not need to be connected to or­

ganized religion in order to be meaningful. Some individu­

als find their sacred connection to life communing with

the natural world and engaging in practices that honor

life-sustaining ecosystems. We can mediate, pray, go to

temple, church, mosque, or create a quiet sanctuary where

we live to commune with holy spirits . To some folks, daily

service to others is affirmative spiritual practice, one that

expresses their love for others. When we make a commit­

ment to staying in touch with divine forces that inform

our inner and outer world, we are choosing to lead a life

in the spirit.

I study spiritual teachings as a guide for reflec tion and

action . Countercultural spiritual awakening is visible in

books and magazines and in smali circles where individu­

als come to celebrate and commune with the divine. Fel­

lowship with other seekers after truth offers essential

inspIration. Since the earliest roots of my spiritual practice

were in the Christian tradition, 1 still find the traditional

church to be a place for worship and fellowship, and I also

participate in a Buddhist practice. I meditate and pray.

8 I

'1

A" ,,"OC', COy,' 1 Everyone has to choose the spiritual practice that best en­

hances their life . This is why progressIve seekers after truth

urge us all to be toleran t-to remem ber that though Our

paths are many, we are made one community in love.

The spiritual awakening that is slowly taking place

counterculturally will become more of a daily norm as we

all willingly break mainstream cultural taboos that silence

or erase our passion for spiritual practice . For a long time

many of my friends and work peers had no idea I was

devoted to a spiritual practice . Among progressive think­

ers and scholars it was much more hip, cool, and ac­

ceptable to express atheistic sentiments than to declare

passionate devotion to divine spirit . I also did not want

folks to think that if I talked about my spiritual beliefs I

was trying to convert them, to impose those beliefs on

them in any way.

I began to speak more openly about th e place of spiri­

tuality in my life when witnessing the despair of my stu­

dents, their sense of hopelessness, their fears that life is

without meaning, their profound loneliness and loveless­

ness . When young, bright, beautiful students would come

to my office and confess their despondency, I felt it was

irresponsible to just listen and commiserate with their

woes without daring to share how I had confronted simi­

lar issues in my life. Often they would urge me to tell them

how I sustained my joy in living. To tell the truth, I had

8 2

S PIRITUALITY: DI V I N E l.OVE

to be willing to talk openly about spiri tual life. And I had

to find a way to talk about my choices that did not imply

that they would be the correct or right choices for some­

one else.

My belief that God is love- that love is everything, our

true destiny-sustains me. I affirm these beliefs through

daily meditation and prayer, through contemplation and

service, through worship and loving kindness. In the in­

troduction to Lovingkindness, Sharon Sa lzberg teaches

that the Buddha described spiritual practice as "the lib­

eration of the heart which is love. " She urges us to re­

member that spiritual practice helps us overcome the

feeling of isolation, which "uncovers the radiant, joyful

heart within each of us and manifests this radiance to the

world." Everyone needs to be in touch with the needs

of their spirit. This connectedness calls us to spiritual

awakening-to love. In the biblica l book of John, a pas­

sage reminds us that "anyone who does not know love is

still in death ."

All awakening to love is spiritual awakening.

8 3

Six

VALUES :

LIVING BY A LOVE ETHIC

We must live for the day, and work for the day, when

human society realigns itself with the radical love of

God. In a truly democratic paradigm, there is no Jove

of power for power's sake.

- MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

AWAKENING TO LOVE can happen only as we

let go of our obsession with power and domination . Cul­

turally, all spheres of American life-politics, religion,

the workplace, domestic households, intimate relations­

should and could have as thei r foundation a love ethic.

The underlying values of a culture and its ethics shape and

inform the way we speak and act. A love ethic presupposes

that everyone has the right to be free, to live fully and

well. To bring a love ethic to every dimension of our lives,

our society would need to embrace change. At the end of

The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm affirms that "important

and radical changes are necessary, if love is to become a

social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenom­

enon." Individuals who choose to love can and do alter

our lives in ways that honor the primacy of a love ethic.

We do this by choosing to work with individuals we ad­

mire and respect; by committing to give our all to rela-

8 7

AI.I \B()t)T ! ()V!

tionships; by embracing a global vision wherein we see Our

lives and our fate as l11timately connected to those of

everyone else on the planet.

Commitment to a love ethic transforms our lives by of­

fering LlS a di fferent set of values to live by. In large and

small ways , we make choices based on a belief that hon­

esty, openness , and personal integrity need to be expressed

in public and private deCIsions . I chose to move to a sm all

city so I co uld live in the same area as family even though

it was not as culturally desi ra ble as the place I left. Friends

of mine li ve at home with aging parents, caring for them

even though they have enough money to go elsewhere.

Livi ng by a love ethic we learn to val ue loyalty and a

commitment to susta ined bonds over mater ial advance­

ment. While careers and making money remain im portant

agendas, they never take precedence over valuing and nur­

turing h uman life and well-being .

I know no one who has embraced a love ethic whose

life has not become joyous and more fu lfilli ng. The wide­

spread assumption that eth ical behavior takes the fun

out of li fe is false. In actuality , living eth ically ensures

that relationships in our lives, including encounters w ith

strangers, nurture our spiritual growth . Behaving uneth i­

cally, w ith no thought to the consequences of our actions,

is a bit like ea ting tons of junk foo d. While it may taste

good, in the end the body is never really adequately nour­

is hed and remains in a constant state of lack and longing.

8 8

V ,\ I U I,: S: L I V I 0: ,; 1\ Y A I 0 \' I I- T II I C

Our souls feel this lack when we act unethically, behaving

111 ways that diminish our spirits and dehumanize others.

TESTIMONY IN NEW AGE writing affirms the way in

which embracing a love ethic transforms life for the good.

Yet a lot of this information only reaches those of us who

have class privilege . And often , individua ls whose lives are

rich in spiri tual and material well-being, who have diverse

fr iends from all walks of life who nurture their personal

integrity, tell the rest o f the w orld these things are impos­

sible to come by . I am talking here about the many proph­

ets of doom who tell us that rac ism wil l never end, sexism

is here to stay, the rich will never share their resources.

W e would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for

a day. Much of what they a re telling us cannot be had,

they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion

of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go

around, that the good life can be had only by a few .

Talking to a university audience recently I expressed my

faith in the power of white people to speak out against

racism, challenging and changing prejudice- emphatically

stating that I definitely bel ieve we can all change our

minds and our actions. I stressed that this faith was not

rooted in a utopian longing but, rather, that I believed this

because of our nation 's history of the many individuals

who have offered their lives in the service of justice and

freedom . When challenged by folk s w ho claimed that

8 9

r\ L I L 0 V E

these individuals were exceptions, I agreed. But I then

talked about the necessity of changing our think ing so that

we see ourse lves as being like the one who does change

rather than among the among who refuse to change. What

made these individua ls exceptiona l was not that they were

any smarter or kinder than their neighbors but that they

were will ing to live the truth of their values .

Here is another example. If you go door to door in our

nation and ta lk to citizens about domestic violence, almost

everyone will insist that they do not support male violence

against women, that they believe it to be morally and ethi­

cally wrong. However, if you then explain that we can

only end ma le violence against women by challenging pa­

triarchy, and that means no longer accepting the notion

that men should have more rights and privileges than

women because of biological difference or that men

should have the power to rule over women, that is when

the agreement stops. There is a gap between the values

they claim to hold and thei r willingness to do the work of

connecting thought and action, theory and practice to re­

alize these values and thus create a more just society.

Sadly, many of our nation's citizens are proud to live

in one of the most democratic countries in the world even

as they are afraid to stand up for individuals who live

under repressive and fascist governments . They are afra id

to act on what they believe because it would mean chal­

lenging the conservative status quo. Refusal to stand up

9 0

~

VALUES: LIVING BY A LOVE ETHIC

for what you believe in weakens individual morality and

ethics as well as those of the culture . No wonder then that

we are a nation of people, the majority of whom, across

race, class, and gender, claim to be religious, claim to be­

lieve in the divine power of love, and yet collectively re­

main unable to embrace a love ethic and allow it to guide

behavior, especially if doing so would mean supporting

radical change.

Fear of radical changes leads many citizens of our na­

tion to betray their minds and hearts. Yet we are all sub­

jected to radical changes every day. We face them by

moving through fear. These changes are usually imposed

by the status quo. For example, revolutionary new tech­

nologies have led us all to accept computers. Our willing­

ness to embrace this "unknown" shows that we are all

capable of confronting fears of radical change, that we can

cope. Obviously, it is not in the interest of the conservative

status quo to encourage us to confront our collective fear

of love. An overall cultural embrace of a love ethic would

mean that we would all oppose much of the public policy

conservatives condone and support.

Society's collective fear of love must be faced if we are

to lay claim to a love ethic that can inspire us and give us

the courage to make necessary changes. Writing about the

changes that must be made, Fromm explains: "Society

must be organized in such a way that man's social, loving

nature is not separated from his social existence, but be-

9 I

A LL ABOUT L OVE

comes one with it. If it is true as I have tried to show that

love is the on ly sane and satisfactory response to the prob­

lem of human existence, then any society which excludes,

relatively, the development of love, must in the long run

perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities

of human nature. Indeed, to speak of love is not 'preach­

ing, ' for the simple reason that it means to speak of the

ultimate and real need in every human being . ... To have

faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only

exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith

based on the insight into the very nature of man." Faith

enables us to move past fear. We can collectively regain

our faith in the transformative power of love by cultivat­

ing courage, the strength to stand up for what we believe

in, to be accountable both in word and deed .

I am especially fond of the biblical passage in the fi rst

epistle of John, which tells us : "There is no fear in love;

but perfect love casteth out fear: because fea r hath tor­

ment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love ." From

childhood on this passage of scripture has enchanted me.

I was fascinated by the repeated use of the word "perfect."

For some time I thought of this word only in relation to

being without fault or defect. Taught to believe that this

understanding of what it means to be perfect was always

out of human reach, that we were, of necessity, essentially

human because we were not perfect but were always

bound by the mystery of the body, by our limitations, this

9 2

VALUE S : LIVING IlY A LOVE ETHIC

call to know a perfect love disturbed me. It seemed a wor­

thy calling, but impossible. That is, until I looked for a

deeper, more complex understanding of the word "perfect"

and found a definition emphasizing the will "to refine."

Suddenly my passage was illuminated. Love as a process

that has been refined, alchemically altered as it moves

from state to state, is that "perfect love" that can cast out

fear. As we love, fear necessarily leaves. Contrary to the

notion that one must work to attain perfection, this out­

come does not have to be struggled for-it just happens.

It is the gift perfect love offers . To receive the gift , we must

first understand that "there is no fear in love." But we do

fear and fear keeps us from trusting in love.

Cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as

a way to ensure obedience. In our society we make much of

love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid

most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the no­

tion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states

of extreme anxiety and dread . Fear is the primary force up­

holding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for

separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught

that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of

any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love

we choose to move against fear-against alienation and

separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect-to

find ourselves in the other.

Since so many of us are imprisoned by fea r, we can

9 3

A Ll. ABOLIT L OVE

move toward a love ethic only by the process of conver- '

sion. Philosopher Cornel West states that "a politics of

conversion " restores our sense of hope. Calling attention

to the pervasive nihilism in our society he reminds us: "Ni­

hilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses, it is

tamed by love and care . Any disease of the soul must be

conquered by a turning of one's soul. This turning is done

through one's own affirmation of one's worth- an affir­

mation fueled by the concern of others." In an attempt to

ward off life-threatening despair, more and more indi­

viduals are turning toward a love ethic. Signs that this

conversion is taking place abound in our culture. It's re­

assuring when masses of people read literature like Tho­

mas Moore's Care of the Soul, a work that invites us to

reevaluate the values that undergird our lives and make

choices that affirm our interconnectedness with others.

Embracing a love ethic means that we utilize all the

dimensions of love-"care, commitment, trust, responsi­

bility, respect, and knowledge"-in our everyday lives.

We can successfully do this only by cultivating awareness.

Being aware enables us to critically examine our actions

to see what is needed so that we can give care, be respon­

sible, show respect, and indicate a willingness to learn.

Understanding knowledge as an essential element of love

is vital because we are daily bombarded with messages

that tell us love is about mystery, about that which cannot

be known. We see movies in which people are represented

9 4

V A I. I I E S: I. I V I N G B Y A L 0 VEE T Hie

as being in love who never talk with one another, who

fa ll into bed wi thout ever discussing their bodies, their

sexua l needs, their likes and dis likes. Indeed, the message

recei ved from the mass media is that knowledge makes

love less compelling; that it is ignorance that gives love its

erotic and transgressive edge. These messages are often

brought to us by profiteering producers who have no clue

about the art of loving, who substitute their mystified vi­

siems because they do not really know how to genuinely

portray loving interaction.

Were we, collectively, to demand that our mass media

portray images tha t reflect love's reality, it would happen.

This change would radically alter our culture. The mass

media dwells on and perpetuates an ethic of domination

and violence because our image makers have more inti­

mate knowledge of these realities than they have with the

realities of love. We all know what violence looks like. All

scholarsh ip in the fie ld of cultural studies focusing on a

critical analysis of the mass media , whether pro or con,

indicates that images of violence, particularly those that

involve action and gore, capture the attention of viewers

more than still, peacefu l images . The small groups of peo­

ple who produce most of the images we see in this culture

have heretofore shown no interest in learning how to rep­

resent images of love in ways that will capture and stir

our cultural imagination and hold our attention.

If the work they d id was informed by a love ethic, they

9 5

,ILL ,\llOU·' lOVE

would consider it important to think crit ically about the

images they create. And that wou ld mean thinking about

the impact of these images, the ways they shape culture

and inform how we think and act in everyday life . If un­

familiar with love's terrain , they would hire consultants

who would provide the necessary insight. Even though

some individual scholars try to tell us there is no direct

connection between images of violence and the violence

confronting us in our lives, the commonsense truth re­

mains-we are all affected by the images we consume and

by the state of mind we a re in when watching them. If

consumers want to be entertained, and the images shown

us as entertaining are images of violent dehumanization,

it makes sense that these acts become more acceptable in

our daily lives and that we become less likely to respond

to them with moral outrage or concern. Were we all seeing

more images of loving human interaction, it would un­

doubtedly have a positive impact on our lives.

We cannot talk about changing the types of images of­

fered us in the mass media without acknowledging the

extent to which the vast majority of the images we see are

created from a patriarchal standpoint . These images will

not change until patriarchal thinking and perspectives

change. Individual women and men who do not see them­

selves as victims of patriarchal power find it difficult to

take seriously the need to challenge and change patriarchal

thinking. But reeducation is always possible. Masses of

9 6

V ;\ 1 1I I. S : 1. 1 V 1 N (; 1\ Y A 1 () V I· E T HIe

people are negatively affected by patriarchal institutions

an d, most specifically, by male domination . Since individu­

als committed to advancing patriarchy are producing most

of the images we see, they have an investment in providing

us with representat ions that reflect their values and the so­

cial institutions they wish to uphold. Patriarchy, like any

system of domination (for example, raci sm ), relies on so­

cializing everyone to believe that in all human relati ons

there is an inferior and a superior party, one person is

strong, the other weak, and that it is therefore natural for

the powerful to rule over the powerless . T o those who sup­

port patriarchal thinking, maintaining power and control

is acceptable by whatever means. Naturally, anyone so­

cialized to think this way would be more interested in and

stimulated by scenes of domination and violence rather

than by scenes of love and care. Yet they need a consumer

audience to whom they can sell their product. Therein lies

our power to demand change.

While the contempora ry feminist movement has done

much to intervene with this kind of thinking, challenging

and changing it, and by so doing offering women and men

a chance to lead more fu lfill ing lives, patriarchal thinking

is st ill the norm for those in power. This does not mean

we do not have the r ight to demand change. We ha ve

power as consumers . We can exercise that power all the

time by not choosing to invest time, energy, or funds to

support the production an d dissemination of mass media

9 7

,\1.1 AIIOUT LOVE

images that do not reflect life-enhancing va lues, that un­

dermin e a love ethi c. Th is is not meant to be an argument

fo r censo rship . Most of the evils in our world are not

created by the mass media. For example , clearly, the mass

media does not create viol ence in the home . Domestic vio­

lence was widespread even when there was no television.

But everyone knows that all forms of violence are glam­

orized and made to appear interesting and seductive by

the mass media. The producers of these images could just

as easily use the mass med ia to cha llenge and change vio­

lence . When images we see condone violence, whether

they lead any of us to be "more" violent or not, they do

affirm the notion that violence is an acceptable means of

social control, that it is fine for one individual or group

to dominate another individual or group .

Domination cannot exist in any social situation where

a love ethic prevails . Jung's insight, that if the will to

power is paramount love will be lacking, is important to

remember. When love is present the desire to dominate

and exercise power cannot rule the day. All the great so­

cial movements for freedom and justice in our society have

promoted a love ethic. Concern for the collective good of

our nation, city, Of neighbor rooted in the values of love

makes us all seek to nurture and protect that good. If all

public policy was created in the spirit of love, we wou ld

not have to worry about unemployment, homelessness,

schools fail ing to teach children, or addiction.

9 8

VALUES : LIVING HY A LOVE ETHIC

Were a love ethic informing all public policy in cities

and towns, individuals would come together and map out

programs that would affect the good of everyone. Melody

Chavis's wonderful book Altars in the Street: A Neigh­

borhood Fights to Survive tells a story of real people com­

ing together across diffe rences of race and class to improve

their living environment. She speaks from the perspective

of a white woman who moves with her family into a pre­

dominately black community. As someone who embraces

a love ethic, Melody joins her neighbors to create peace

and love in their environment. Their work succeeds but is

undermined by the failure of support from public policy

and city government . Concurrently, she also works to help

prisoners on death row. Loving community in all its di­

versity, Melody states: "Sometimes I think that I've been

trying, on death row and in my neighborhood, to gain

some control over the violence in my life. As a child I was

completely helpless in the face of violence." Her book

shows the changes a love ethic can make even in the most

troubled community. It also documents the tragic conse­

quences to human life when terror and violence become

the accepted norm.

When small communities organize their lives around a

love ethic, every aspect of daily life can be affirming for

everyone. In all his prose work Kentucky poet Wendell

Berry writes eloquently about the positive values that exist

in rural communities that embrace an ethic of commu-

9 9

Al.L ABOUT LOVE

nalism and the sharing of resources. In Another Turn of

the Crank, Berry exposes the extent to which the interests

of big business lead to the destruction of rural communi­

ties, reminding us that destruction is fast becoming the

norm in all types of communities. He encourages us to

learn from the lives of folks who live in communities gov­

erned by a spirit of love and communalism. Sharing some

of the values held by citizens of these communities he

writes : "They are people who take and hold a generous

and neighborly view of self-preservation; they do not be­

lieve that they can survive and flourish by the rule of dog

eat dog; they do not believe that they can succeed by de­

feating or destroying or selling or using up everything but

themselves. They doubt that good solutions can be pro­

duced by violence. They want to preserve the precious

things of nature of human culture and pass them on to

their children . .. . They see that no commonwealth or

community of interest can be defined by greed .. .. They

know that work ought to be necessary; it ought to be

good; it ought to be satisfying and dignifying to the people

who do it; and genuinely useful and pleasing to the people

for whom it is done."

I like living in small towns precisely because they are

most often the places in our nation where basic principles

underlying a love ethic exist and are the standards by

which most people try to live their lives. In the small town

where I live (now only some of the time) there is a spirit

I 00

VAl.liIS : I.IVIN G BY i\ LOVE ETHIC

of neighborliness-of fellowship , care, and respect. These

same values existed in the neighborhoods of the town in

which I grew up. Even though I spend most of my time

in New York City, I live in a cooperative apartment build­

ing where we all know each other. We protect and nurture

our collective well-being. We strive to make our home

place a positive envi ronment for everyone. We all agree

that integrity and care enhance all our lives. We try to live

by the principles of a love eth ic.

To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic

(showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will

to cooperate ), we have to be courageous. Learning how

to face our fea rs is one way we embrace love. Our fear

may not go away, but it will not stand in the way. Those

of us who have already chosen to embrace a love ethic,

allowing it to govern and inform how we think and act,

know that when we let our light shine, we draw to us and

are drawn to other bearers of light. We are not alone .

I 0 I

Seven

GREED:

SIMPLY LOVE

The fading away of greed and hatred is the founda­

tion fo r liberation. Liberation is "the sure heart' s

re lease" -an understanding of the truth so powerful

that there is no turning back from it .

-SHARON SA LZBE RG

A LTHOUGH WE L I V I', m close contact with

neighbors, masses of people in our society fee l alienated,

cut off, alone. Isolation and loneliness are central causes

of depression and despair. Yet they are the outcome of life

in a culture where things matter more than people. Ma­

teria lism creates a world of narcissism in which the focus

of life is solely on acquisition and consumption. A culture

of narcissism is not a place where love can flourish . The

emergence of the "me" culture is a direct response to our

nation's failure to truly actualize the vision of democracy

articulated in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Left

alone in the "me" culture, we consume and consume with

no thought of others. Greed and exploitation become the

norm when an ethic of domination prevails. They bring

in their wake alienation and lovelessness. Intense spiritual

and emotional lack in our lives is the perfect breeding

ground fo r material greed and overconsumption. In a

I 0 5

,\ I. l !\ Il 0 U '[ L () V F.

world without love the passion to connect can be replaced

by the passion to possess. While emotional needs are dif­

ficult, and often are impossible to satisfy, material des ires

are easier to fulfill. Our nation fell into the trap of patho­

logical narcissim in the wake of wars that brought eco­

nomic bounty while undermining the vision of freedom

and justice essential to sustaining democracy.

Nowadays we live in a world where poor teenagers are

willing to maim and murder for a pair of tennis shoes or

a designer coat; this is not a consequence of poverty. In

dire situations of poverty at earlier times in our nation's

history, it would have been unthinkable to the poor to

murder someone for a luxury item. While it was common

for individuals to steal or attack someone in the interests

of acquiring resources-money, food, or something as

simple as a winter coat to ward off the cold-there was

no value system in place that made a life less important

than the material desire for an inessential object.

Whether poor or rich, in the mid -fifties most citizens in

our nation felt it was the best place in the world to live

because it was a democracy, a place where human rights

mattered. This sense of our nation's vision sustained its

citizens and served as the catalyst empowering freedom

struggles in our society. In the article "Chicken Little, Cas­

sandra, and the Real Wolf: So Many Ways to Think

About the Future," Donella Meadows describes the sig­

nificance of a visionary standpoint: "A vision articulates

I 0 6

"~,'il' .

; ;{ ,

GREED: SIMPLY LOVE

a fu ture that someone deeply wants, and does it so clearly

and compell ingly that it summons up the energy, agree­

ment, sympathy, political wi ll, creativity, resources, or

whatever to make that vision happen ." Our nation's ac­

tive participation in global warfare call ed into question its

commitment to democracy both here at home and abroad .

That vision was diminished in the wake of the Vietnam

War. Prior to the war, a hopeful vision of justice and love

had been evoked by the civil rights struggle, the feminist

movement, and sexual liberation. However, by the late

seventies, after the failure of radical movements for social

justice aimed at making the world a democratic, peaceful

place where resources could be shared and a meaningful

life could become a possibility for everyone, folks stopped

ta lking about love. The loss of lives at home and abroad

had created economic plenty while leaving in its wake dev­

astation and loss . Americans were asked to sacrifice the

vision of freedom, love, and justice and put in its place

the worship of materialism and money. This vision of so­

ciety upheld the need for imperialistic war and injustice.

A great feeling of despair gripped our nation when the

leaders who had led struggles for peace, justice, and love

were assassinated.

Psychologically, we were In despair even as economIC

booms opened up jobs for women and men from previ­

ously disenfranchised groups. Instead of looking for

justice in the public world, individuals turned to their pri-

I 0 7

ALL ABO U T LOVE

vate lives, seeking a place of solace and escape. Initially,

lots of folks turned inward to family and relationships to

find again a sense of connection and stability. Coming face

to face with rampant lovelessness in the home created an

overwhelming sense of cultural brokenheartedness. Not

only did individuals despair about their capacity to change

the world, they began to feel enormous despair about their

ability to make basic positive changes in the emotional

fabric of their daily lives. Divorce rates were the primary

indicators that marriage was not a safe haven; And

mounting public awareness of the extent to which domes­

tic violence and all manner of child abuse were widespread

clearly revealed that the patriarchal family could not offer

sanctuary.

Confronted with a seemingly unmanageable emotional

universe, some people embraced a new Protestant work

ethic, convinced that a successful life would be measured

by how much money one made and the goods one could

buy with this money. The good life was no longer to be

found in community and connection, it was to be found

in accumulation and the fulfillment of hedonistic, mate­

rialistic desire . In keeping with this shift in values from a

people-oriented to a thing-oriented society, the rich and

famous, particularly movie stars and singers, began to be

seen as the only relevant cultural icons. Gone were the

visionary political leaders and activists. Suddenly it was

no longer important to bring an ethical dimension to the

108

GREED: SIMPLY l.OVE

work life, making money was the goal, and by whatever

means. Widespread embrace of corruption undermined

any chance that a love ethic would resurface and restore

hope .

By the late seventies, among privileged people the wor­

ship of money was expressed by making corruption ac­

ceptable and the ostentatious parading of material luxury

the norm. To many people, our nation's acceptance of

corruption as the new order of the day began with the

unprecedented exposure of presidential dishonesty and the

lack of ethical and moral behavior in the White House.

This lack of ethics was explained away by government

officials linking support of big business to further impe­

rialism with national security and dominance globally.

This coincided neatly with the decline in the influence of

institutionalized religion, which had previously provided

moral guidance. The church and temple became places

where a materialistic ethic was supported and rational­

ized.

Among the poor and the other underclasses, the wor­

ship of money became most evident by the unprecedented

increase in the street drug industry, one of the rare loca­

tions where capitalism worked well for a few individuals.

Quick money, often large amounts made from drug sales,

allowed the poor to satisfy the same material longings as

the rich. While the desired objects might have differed, the

satisfaction of acquisition and possession was the same.

10 9

ALL ABOUT L.OVE

Greed was the order of the day. Mirroring the dominant "

capitalist culture, a few individuals in poor communities

prospered while the vast majority suffered endless unsat­

isfied cravings. Imagine a mother living in poverty who

has always taught her children the difference between

right and wrong, who has taught them to value being hon­

est because she wants to provide them with a moral and

ethical universe, who suddenly accepts a child selling

drugs because it brings into the home financial resources

for both necessary and unnecessary expenses . Her ethical

values are eroded by the intensity of longing and lack. But

she no longer sees herself as living at odds with the con­

sumer culture she lives in; she has become connected, one

with the culture of consumption and driven by its de­

mands.

Love is not a topic she thinks about. Her life has been

characterized by a lack of love. She has found it makes

life easier when she hardens her heart and turns her atten­

tion toward more attainable goals-acquiring shelter and

food, making ends meet, and finding ways to satisfy de­

sires for little material luxuries. Thinking about love may

simply cause her pain. She, and hordes of women like her,

have had enough pain. She may even turn to addiction to

experience the pleasure and satisfaction she never found

when seeking love.

Widespread addiction 111 both poor and affluent com­

munities is linked to our psychotic lust for material con-

I I 0

(; REI: LJ: S I l'vl PLY L 0 V E

sumption . It keeps us unable to love. Fixating on wants

and needs, which consumerism encourages us to do, pro­

motes a psychological state of endless craving. This leads

to an anguish of spirit and torment so intense that intoxi­

cating substances provide release and relief while bringing

in their wake the problem of addiction. M illions of our

nation's citizens are addicted to alcohol and legal and il­

legal drugs . In poor communities, where addiction is the

norm, there is no culture of recovery. The poor who are

addicted and who lack the means to indulge their habit

are caught in the grip of major physical and emotional

suffering. Addicts want release from pain; they are not

th inking about love.

In Stanton Peele's useful book Love and Addiction, he

makes the insightful point that " addictio n is not about

relatedness ." Addiction makes love imposs ible. Most ad­

dicts are primarily concerned with acquiring and using

their drug, whether it be alcohol, cocaine, heroin, sex, or

shopping. Hence, addiction is both a consequence of wide­

spread lovelessness and a cause. Only the drug is sacred

to an addict. Relationships of intimacy and closeness are

destroyed as the addicted individual participates in a

greedy search for satisfaction. Greed characterizes the na­

ture of this pursuit because it is unending; the desire is

ongoing and can never be fully satisfied.

Of course, the ravages of addiction are more glaringly

obvious in the lives of the poor and dispossessed because

I I I

A l I ,A B () U" I 0 V F

they have neither the means to engage in the cover-ups so

effectively employed by privileged addicts nor the access

to recovery programs. When the case against O . J. Simp­

son was national news, there was little discussion of the

role substance abuse p layed in facilitating th e emotional

estrangement in an already dysfunctional family . While

domestic violence was highlighted , and everyone agrees

that it was not accepta ble behavior, substance abuse was

not . It was not seen as a major factor that destroyed the

conditions needed for positive emotional interaction.

For example, it was not acceptable fo r anyone to talk

compassionately (in a manner that did not blame the vic­

tim ) about the possibility that Nicole Simpson had kept

herself and her children in a dangerous, life-threatening

environment in part because she was not willing to sac­

ri fice her attachment to a superficially glamorous lifestyle

among the r ich and famo us. Behind the scenes, when they

are not afraid of being seen as politically incorrect, women

who are bonded with abusive, rich, and powerful men ta lk

easily about their addiction to power and wealth . Both

men and women remain in dysfunctional, loveless rela­

tionships when it is materially opportune.

All over this nation greed motivates individuals to place

themselves in life-threatening situations. Our prisons are

full of people w hose crimes were motivated by greed , usu­

ally the lust for money. While this lust is the natura l re­

sponse of anyone who has tota lly embraced the val ues of

I I 2

C R I. L \): S 1 Ivl P I. Y I. () V E

consumerism, when these individuals harm others in their

pursuit of wealth we are encouraged to see their behavior

as aberrant. We are all encouraged to believe they are not

like us, yet studies show that many people are willing to

lie to gain monetary advantage. Most people are tempted

by longings to endlessly consume or to try to acquire

wealth by any means. In recent years the public support

of gambling, both in lotteries and casinos, has heightened

the awareness that desire for money can be addictive. Yet

the fact that large numbers of working- and middle-class

people gamble away their hard -earned incomes in the

hope of becoming wealthy is never national news. Many

of these hardworking citizens lie and cheat other family

members to sustain their habit . While they will not be

arrested or put in prison, their dysfunctional behavior un­

dermines the trust and care in families . They have more

in common with prisoners who risk everything in the hope

of making easy money than they have with family mem­

bers who want loving connection to be more important

than the lust for material success .

In the Seven Laws of Money, Michael Phillips calls

attention to the fact that most of the prisoners he en­

countered, incarcerated for stealing as they attempted to

"get rich quick ," were smart, industrious individuals who

could have worked and attained material wealth. Working

daily to earn money would have taken time. Significantly,

the combination of the lust for material wealth and the

I I 3

ALL ABOUT LOVE

desire for immediate satisfaction are the signs that this

materialism has become addictive. The need for instant

gratification is a component of greed.

This same polit ics of greed is at play when folks seek

love. They often want fu lfillment immediately. Genuine

love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly

gratified. To know genuine love we have to invest time

and commitment. As John We[wood reminds us in Jour­

ney o f the H eart: Th e Path of Conscious Love, "dreaming

that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a

steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in

wishful fantasy, undermining the rea l power of the love­

which is to transform us." Many people want love to

function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sus­

tained high. They want to do nothing, just passively re­

ceive the good feel ing. In patria rchal culture men are

especially inclined to see love as something they should

receive without expending effort. More often than not

they do not want to do the work that love demands. When

the practice of love invites us to enter a place of potential

bliss that is at the same time a place of critical awakening

and pain, many of us turn our backs on love.

All the widespread emphasis on dysfunctional relation­

ships in our society could easily lead to the assumption

that we are a nation committed to ending dysfunction,

committed to creating a culture where love can flourish.

The truth is, we are a nation that normalizes dysfunction.

I I 4

G R E ED: S IMP I. Y L 0 V E

The more attention focused on dysfunctional bonds, the

more the message that families are all a bit messed up

becomes commonplace and the greater the notion be­

comes that this is just how families are . Like hedonistic

consumption, we are encouraged to believe that the ex­

cesses of the family are normal and that it is abnormal to

believe that one can have a fun ctional , loving family.

This is the outcome of living in a culture where the

politics of greed are normalized. The message we get is

that everybody wants to have more money to buy more

things so it is not problematic if we lie and cheat a bit to

get ahead. Unlike love, desires for material objects can be

satisfied instantly if we have the cash or the credit card

handy, or even if we are just willing to sign the papers

that make it so we can get what we want now and pay

more later. Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the

heart we are encouraged to treat partners as though they

were objects we can pick up, use, and then discard and

dispose of at will, with the one criteria being whether or

not individualistic desires are satisfied.

When greedy consumption is the order of the day, de­

humanization becomes acceptable. Then, treating people

like objects is not only acceptable but is required behavior.

It's the culture of exchange, the tyranny of marketplace

values. Those values inform attitudes about love. Cyni­

cism about love leads young adults to believe there is no

love to be found and that relationships are needed only to

I I 5

ALL ABOUT LOV[

the extent that they satisfy desires. How many times do

we hear someone say "Well, if that person is not satisfying

your needs you should get rid of them"? Relationships are

treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are dis­

posable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get

another. Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot

last when this is the prevailing logic. And fr iendships or

loving community cannot be valued and sustained.

Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and

strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are

not being met. Most people wish they could find love

where they are, in the lives and relationships they have

chosen, but they feel they lack useful strategies for main­

taining these bonds. They turn to mass media for answers .

Increasingly, the mass media is the primary vehicle for the

promotion and affirmation of greed; there is little infor­

mation offered about the establishment and maintenance

of meaningful relationships . If the will to accumulate is

not already present in the television watcher or the movie­

goer, it will be implanted by images that bombard the

psyche with the message that consuming with others, not

connection, should be our goal. Nowadays we go to a

movie and must watch commercials first . The relaxed, re­

ceptive state of surrender we like to reserve for the plea­

sure of entering into the aesethic space of a film in a dark

theater is now given over to advertising, where our sense

and our sensibilities are assaulted against our will.

I I 6

GRE ED: SIMPLY l. OVE

Greed is rightly considered a "deadly sin" because it

erodes the moral values that encourage us to care for the

common good . Greed violates the spirit of connectedness

and community that is natural to human survival. It wipes

out individual recognition of the needs and concerns of

everyone, replacing this awareness with harmful self­

centered ness. Healthy narcissim (the self-acceptance, self­

worth, that is the cornerstone of self-love) is replaced by a

pathological narcissism (wherein only the self matters) that

justifies any action that enables the satisfying of desires .

The will to sacrifice on behalf of another, always present

when there is love, is annihilated by greed. No doubt this

explains our nation's willingness to deprive poor citizens of

government-funded social services while huge sums of

money fuel the ever-growing culture of violent imperialism.

The profiteering prophets of greed are never content; it is

not enough fo r this country to be consumed by a politics of

greed, it must become the natural way of life globaily.

Generosity and charity militates against the prolifera­

tion of greed, whether it takes the form of kindness to

one's neighbor, creating a progressive system of job shar­

ing, or supporting state-funded welfare programs. When

the politics of greed become a cultural norm, all acts of

charity are wrongly seen as suspect and are represented as

a gesture of the weak. As a consequence, our nation's citi­

zens become less charitable every day, arrogantly defend­

ing self-serving policies, which protect the interests of the

I I 7

ALI. AflOUT l.OVE

rich, by claming that the poor and needy have not worked

hard enough. I have been astonished by hearing individu­

als who inherited wealth in childhood warn against shar­

ing resources because people needing help should work for

money in order to appreciate its value. Inherited wealth

and/or substantial material resources are rarely talked

about in the mass media because those who receive it do

not wish to validate the idea that money received that is

not a reward for hard work is beneficial. Their acceptance

and use of this money to strengthen their economic self­

sufficiency exposes the reality that working hard is rarely

the means by which enough of us can gain enough access

to material resources to become wealthy. O ne of the iro­

nies of the culture of greed is that the people who profit

the most from earnings they have not worked to attain

are the most eager to insist that the poor and working

classes can only value material resources attained through

hard work. Of course, they are merely establishing a belief

system that protects their class interests and lessens their

accountability to those who are without privilege.

Marianne Williamson addresses the widespread CYI1l ­

cism about the sharing of resources, which threatens the

spiritual well -being of our nation, in Th e Healing of

America. Williamson contends: "There is so much injus­

tice in America, and such a conspiracy not to discuss it;

and so much suffering, and so much deflection lest we

notice. We are told that these problems are secondary, or

I I 8

C;REE[); S IMPLY LOVF

that it would cost too much to fix them-as though

money is what matters most. Greed is considered legiti ­

mate now, while brotherly love is not." Although Wil­

liamson is a New Age guru, her courageous willingness to

talk about the unacceptable did not diminish her popu­

larity, most readers simply chose to overlook th is particu­

lar book. In it she challenges us to resist, to dare to change

injustice. Without denying tha t she is privileged, she calls

herself and us to task for not sharing the wealth .

Everyone finds it difficult to resist the dictates of greed.

Letting go of material desires may compel us to enter the

space where our emotiona l wants are exposed. When I

interviewed popular rap artist Lil' Kim, I found it fasc i­

nating that she had no interest in love. While she spoke

articulately about the lack of love in her life, the topic that

most galvanized her attention was making money. I came

away from our discussion awed by the reality that a young

black female from a broken home, with less than a high

school education, could struggle against all manner of bar­

riers and accumulate material riches yet be without hope

that she could overcome the barriers blocking her from

knowing how to give and receive love.

The culture of greed val idates and legitimizes her wor­

ship of money; it is not at all interested in her emotional

growth. Who cares if she ever knows love? Sadly, like so

many Americans, she believes that the pursuit and attain­

ment of wealth will compensate for all emotional lack.

I I 9

ALI. .\ 1\ U l i T l. U \' F

Like so many of our nation 's citizens, she does not pay

close attention to the mass media messages that tell us

about the emotional suffering of the rich. If money really

made up for loss and lovelessness, the wealthy would be

the most blissful people on the planet. Instead, we would

do well to remember again the prophetic lyrics sung by

the Beatles: "Money can 't buy me love."

Ironically, the rich who grow greedier and overprotec­

tive of their wealth are increasingly as perpetually stressed

and dissatisfied as the greedy poor who suffer endless

cravings. The rich cannot get enough; they cannot find

contentment. Yet everyone wants to emulate the rich. In

Freedom of Simplicity, Richard Foster writes: "Think of

the misery that comes into our lives by our restless gnaw­

ing greed. We plunge ourselves into enormous debt and

then take two and three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot

our fam ilies with unnecessary moves just so we can have

a more prestigious house . We grasp and grab and never

have enough . And most destructive of all, our flashy cars

and sport spectaculars and backyard pools have a way of

crowding out much interest in civil rights or inner city

poverty or the starved masses of India . Greed has a way

of severing the cords of compassion." Indeed, we ignore

the starving masses in this society, the thirty-eight million

poor people whose lives are testimony to our nation's fail ­

ure to share resources in a charitable and equitable man­

ner. T he worship of money leads to a hardening of the

I 2 0

C, R E E j): S 1 \1 I' I Y I () V I'

heart. And it can lead any of us to condone, ei ther actively

or passively , the exploi tat ion and dehumanization of our­

selves and others.

M uch has been made of the fact that so many sixties

radicals went on to become hardcore capitalists, profiting

by the system they once critiqued and wanted to destroy.

But no one assumes responsiblity for the shift in values

that made the peace and love culture turn toward the poli­

tics of profit and power. T hat shift came about because

the free love that flourished in utopian communal hippie

enclaves, where everyone was young and carefree, did not

take root in the dai ly lives of ordinary working and retired

people. Young progressives committed to social justice

who had fo und it easy to maintain radical politics when

they were living on the edge, on the outside, d id not want

to do the hard work of changing and reorganizing our

existing system in ways that would affirm the values of

peace and love, or democracy and justice. They fell into

despair. And that despair made capitulation to the existing

social order the only place of comfort.

It did not take long for this generation to fi nd out that

they loved material comfort more than justice. It was one

thing to spend a few years doing without comfort to fight

for justice, for civil rights for nonwhite people and women

of all races, but it was quite another to consider a lifetime

where one might face material lack or be compelled to

share resources . When many of the ra dicals and/or hippies

J 2 1

ALL ABOUT LOVE

who had rebelled against excess privilege began to raise

children, they wanted them to have the same access to

material privilege they had known-as well as the luxury

of rebelling against it; they wanted them to be materially

secure. Concurrently, many of the radicals and/or hippies

who had come from backgrounds of material lack were

also eager to find a world of material plenty that would

sustain them. Everyone feared that if they continued to

support a vision of communalism, of sharing resources,

that they would have to make do with less.

Lately, I have sat around dinner tables, wi th fancy food

and drink, dismayed as I listen to reformed radicals joke

about the fact that they would never have imagined years

ago that they would become "social liberals and fiscal con­

servatives," people who want to end welfare while pro­

moting and supporting big business . Williamson makes

this insightful point: "The backlash against welfare in

America today is not really a backlash against welfare

abuse, so much as it is a backlash against compassion in

the public sphere. While America is full of those who

would police our private morals, there is far too little

questioning of societal morals. We are among the richest

nation on earth, yet we spend a trivial amount on our

poor compared to that spent by every other Western in­

dustrialized nation . One fifth of America's children live in

poverty. Half of our African-American children live in

122

GREED: SI~vrpLY l. OVE

poverty . We are the only industrialized Western nation

that does not have universal health care." These are the

truths no one wants to face. M any of our nation's citizens

are afraid to embrace an ethics of compassion because it

threatens their security. Brainwashed to believe that they

can only be secure if they have more than the next person,

they accumulate and still feel insecure because there is a l­

ways someone who has accumulated more.

WE ARE ALL witnessing the ever-widening gap between

the rich and the poor, between the haves and the have­

nots. Those with class privilege live in neighborhoods

where affluence and abundance are made explicit and are

celebrated. The hidden cost of that affluence is not appar­

ent, however. We need not witness the suffering of the

many so that the few may live in a world of excessive

luxury. I once asked a nch man, who had only recently

attained his status, what he liked most about his new

wealth. He said that he liked seeing what money could

make people do, how it could make them shift and violate

their values . He personified the culture of greed. His plea­

sure in being wealthy was grounded in the desire to not

only have more than others but to use that power to de­

grade and humiliate them. To maintain and satisfy greed,

one must support domination . And the world of domi­

nation is always a world without love.

I 2 3

ALL ABOUT lOVE

WE ARE ALL vulnerable. We have all been tempted.

Even those of us committed to an ethic of love are some­

times tempted by greedy desires. These are dangerous

times . It is not just the corrupt who fall sway to greed.

Individuals with good intentions and kind hearts can be

swept away by unprecedented access to power and privi­

lege. When our president exploits his power and con­

sensually seduces a young woman in the government's

employ, he gives public expression to this greed. His ac­

tions reveal a willingness to place all he holds dear at risk

for the satisfaction of hedonistic pleasure. That so many

of our nation's citizens felt his misuse of power was simply

the way things are done- that he simply had the misfor­

tune to get caught- is further testimony that the politics

of greed are condoned. They exemplify the greedy mind­

set that threatens to consume our capacity to love and

with it our capacity to sacrifice on behalf of those we love.

Concurrently, the young woman involved manipulates

facts and details, and ultimately prostitutes herself by sell­

ing her story for material gain because she is greedy for

fame and money, and society condones this get-rich-quick

scheme. Her greed is even more intense because she also

wants to be seen as a victim. With the boldness of any

con artist working the capitalist addiction to fantasy, she

attempts to rewrite the script of their consensual exchange

of pleasure so that it can appear to be a love story. Her

I 2 4

CREED: SIMPLY LOVE

hope is that everyone will be seduced by the fantasy and

will ignore the reality that deceit, betrayal, and a lack of

care fo r the feelings of others can never be a place where

love will flourish . This is a not a love story. It is a public

dramatization of the politics of greed at play, a greed so

intense it destroys love.

Greed subsumes love and compaSSlOn; living simply

makes room for them. Living simply is the primary way

everyone can resist greed every day. All over the world

people are becoming more aware of the importance of

living simply and sharing resources . While communism

has suffered political defeat globally, the politics of com­

munalism continue to matter. We can all resist the temp­

tation of greed. We can work to change public policy,

electing leaders who are honest and progressive. We can

turn off the television set. We can show respect for love.

To save our planet we can stop thoughtless waste . We can

recycle and support ecologically advanced survival

strategies. We can celebrate and honor communalism and

interdependency by sharing resources. All these gestures

show a respect and a gratitude for life. When we value

the delaying of gratification and take responsibility for our

actions, we simplify our emotional universe. Living simply

makes loving simple. The choice to live simply necessari ly

enhances our capacity to love. It is the way we learn to

practice compassion, daily affirming our connection to a

world community.

I 2 5

Eight

COMMUNITY:

LOVING COMMUNION

Community cannot take root in a divided life. Long

before community assumes external shape and form,

it must be present as a seed in the undivided self:

only as we are in communion with ourselves can we

find community with others.

- PARK ER PA LMER

TEN S Ii R E HUM A N survival everywhere in the

world, females and males organize themselves into com­

munities. Communities sustain life- not nuclear families,

or the "couple," and certainly not the rugged individual­

ist. There is no better place to learn the art of loving than

in community. M. Scott Peck begins his book The Differ­

ent Drum: Community Making and Peace with the pro­

found decla ration: "In and through community lies the

salvation of the world." Peck defines community as the

commg together of a group of individuals "who have

learned how to communicate honestly with each other,

whose relationships go deeper than their masks of com­

posure, and who have developed some significant com­

mitment to 'rejoice together, mourn together,' and to

'delight in each other, and make other's conditions our

own.'" We are all born into the world of community.

Rarely if ever does a child come into the world in isola-

I 2 9

,\ L I ,.\ 1\ () II r I. o V I

tion, wi th only one or two onlookers . Children are born

into a world surrounded by the possibility of communi­

ties . Family, doctors, nurses, midwives , and even admiring

strangers comprise this field of connections, some more

intimate than others.

Much of the talk about "family va lues" in our society

highlights the nuclear family , one that is made up of

mother, father, and preferably only one or two children.

In the Un ited States th is unit is presented as the primary

and preferable organization for the parenting of children,

one that will ensure everyone's optimal well-being. Of

course, this is a fa ntasy image of family. Hardly anyone

in our society lives in an environment like this. Even in­

dividuals who are raised in nuclear families usually ex­

perience it as merely a small unit within a larger unit of

extended kin . Capitalism and patriarchy together, as

structures of domination, have worked overtime to under­

mine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin . Replac­

ing the family community with a more privatized small

autocratic unit helped increase alienation and made abuses

of power more possible . It gave absolute rule to the father,

and secondary ru le over children to the mother. By encour­

aging the segregation of nuclear families from the extended

fami ly, women were forced to become more dependent on

an individual man, and children more dependent on an in­

dividual woman. It is this dependency that became, and is ,

the breeding ground for abuses of power.

I 3 0

C OMrv!UNITY: LOVING COMMUNION

The failure of the patriarchal nuclear family has been

utterly documented. Exposed as dysfunctional more often

than not, as a place of emotional chaos, neglect, and

abuse, only those in denial continue to insist that this is

the best environment for raising children. While I do not

want to suggest that extended families are not as likely to

be dysfunctional, simply by virtue of their size and their

inclusion of nonblood kin (i .e., individuals who marry

into the family and their blood relations), they are diverse

and so are likely to include the presence of some individu­

als who are both sane and loving.

When I first began to speak publicly about my dysfunc­

tional fami ly, my mother was enraged. To her, my

achievements were a sign that I could not have suffered

"that much" in our nuclear family . Yet I know I survived

and thrived despite the pain of childhood precisely because

there were loving individuals among our extended family

who nurtured me and gave me a sense of hope and pos­

sibility. They showed that our family 'S interactions did

not constitute a norm, that there were other ways to

think and behave, different from the accepted patterns in

our household . This story is common. Surviving and tri­

umphing over dysfunctional nuclear families may depend

on the presence of what psychoanalyst Alice Miller calls

"enlightened witnesses ." Practically every adult who ex­

perienced unnecessary suffering in childhood has a story

to tell about someone whose kindness, tenderness, and

I 3 I

;\ L L ,\ II 0 U T L 0 V E

concern restored their sense of hope . This could only hap­

pen because families existed as part of larger communities.

The privatized patriarchal nuclear family is still a fairly

recent form of social organization in the world. Most

world citizens do not have, and will never have, the ma­

terial resources to live in small units segregated from

larger family communities. In the United States studies

show that economic facto rs (the high cost of housing, un­

employment) are swiftly creating a cultural climate in

which grown children are leaving the family home later,

and are fre quently returning or never leaving in the first

place. Research by anthropologists and sociologists indi­

cates that small privatized units, especially those organized

around patriarchal thinking, are unhealthy environments

for everyone. Globally, enlightened, healthy parenting is

best realized within the context of community and ex­

tended family networks.

The extended family is a good place to learn the power

of community. However, it can only become a community

if there is honest communication between the individuals

in it. Dysfunctional extended families, like smaller nuclear

family units, are usually characterized by muddied com­

munication. Keeping fam ily secrets often makes it impos­

sible for extended groups to build community. There was

once an advertisement that used the slogan "The family

that prays together stays together. " Since prayer is one

way to communicate, it no doubt does help family mem-

I 3 2

COMMUNITY: IOVINe COtvlMUNION

bers stay connected. I remember hearing this slogan as a

teenager, usually in situations where authority figures

were coercing us to pray, and changing it to "The fami ly

that talks togethe r stays together." Talking together is one

way to make community.

I F WE DO not experience love in our extended families

of origin (which is the fi rst site for community offered us) ,

the other place where children in particular have the op­

portunity to build community and know love is in friend­

ship. Since we choose our friends, many of us, from

childhood on into our adulthood, have looked to friends

for the care, respect, knowledge, and all-around nurtur­

ance of our growth that we did not find in the family.

Writing in her moving memoir Never Let Me Down,

Susan Miller recalls: " I kept thinking, love must be here,

somewhere. I looked and looked inside myself, but I

couldn't find it. I knew what love was. It was the feeling

I had fo r my dolls, for beautiful things, for certain friends.

Later on, when I knew Debbie, my best fr iend, I felt even

more sure that love was what made you feel good. Love

was not what made you feel bad, hate yourself. It was

what comforted you, freed you up inside , made you laugh.

Sometimes Debbie and 1 would fight , but that was differ­

ent because we were basically, essentially connected. "

Loving friendships provide us with a space to experience

the joy of community in a relationship where we learn to

133

ALL A B OUT I OV r

process all our issues, to cope with differences and conflict

while staying connected .

Most of us are raised to believe we will either find love

in our first family (our famil y of origin) or, if not there,

in the second family we are expected to form through

committed romantic couplings, particularly those that

lead to marriage and/or lifelong bondings. Many of us

learn as children that friendship should never be seen as

just as important as family ties. However, friendship is the

place in which a great majority of us have our first glimpse

of redemptive love and caring community. Learning to

love in friendships empowers us in ways that enable us to

bring this love to other interactions with family or with

romantic bonds . A dear friend's mother died when she

was just a young adult. Once when I was compla ining

about my mother fussing at me, she shared that she would

give anything to hear her mother's voice scolding her. En­

couraging me to be patient with my mother, she spoke of

the pain of losing her mother and wished they had worked

harder to find a place of communication and reconcilia­

tion. Her words reminded me to be compassionate, to fo­

cus on what I really enjoy about my mother. In friendship

we are able to hear honest, critical feedback . We trust that

a true friend desires our good . My friend wants me to

relish the presence of my mother.

Often we take friendships for granted even when they

are the interactions where we experience mutual pleasure.

I 3 4

C O_VI ,\1 U NIT Y : I () V I N G CO ,\_1 ,\1 I I ~ I ( ) '"

We place them in a secondary posi tion, especially in re­

lation to romantic bonds . This devaluation of our fr iend­

ships creates an emptiness we may not see when we are

devoting all our attention to finding someone to love ro­

mantically or giving all our attention to a chosen loved

one. Committed love relationships are far more likely to

become codependent when we cut off all our ties with

friends to give these bonds we consider primary our ex­

clusive attention . I have felt especially devastated when

close friends who were single fell in love and simultane­

ously fell away from our fri endship . When a best friend

chose a mate who did not click with me at ail, it caused

me heartache . N ot only did they begin to do everything

together, the friends she stayed closest to were those he

liked best.

The strength of our fr iendship was revealed by our will-

ingness to confront openly the shift in our ties and to

make necessary changes . We do not see each other as

much as we once did, and we no longer call each other

daily, but the positive ties that bind us rem ain intact. The

more genuine our romantic loves the more we do not feel

called upon to weaken or sever ties with friends in order

to strengthen ties with romantic partners. Trust is the

heartbeat of genuine love. And we trust that the attention

our partners give friends, or vice versa, does not take any­

thing away from us-we are not diminished. What we

learn through experience is that our capacity to esta blish

135

ALL A 1\ U 1.I T I. n V F

deep and profound connections in friendship strengthens '

all our intimate bonds .

When we see love as the will to nurture one's own Or

another's spiritual growth, revealed through acts of care,

respect, knowing, and assuming responsibility, the foun­

dation of all love in our life is the saIne. There is no special

love exclusively reserved for romantic partners . Genuine

love is the foundation of our engagement with ourselves,

with family, with friends, with partners, with everyone we

choose to love. While we will necessarily behave differ­

ently depending on the nature of a relationship, or have

varying degrees of commitment, the values that inform

our behavior, when rooted in a love ethic, are always the

same for any interaction . One of the longest romantic re­

lationships of my life was one in which I behaved in the

more traditional manner of placing it above all other in­

teractions. When it became destructive, I found it difficult

to leave . I found myself accepting behavior (verba l and

physical abuse) that I would not have tolerated in a friend ­

ship.

I had been raised conventionally to believe this relation­

ship was "special" and should be revered above all. Most

women and men born in the fifties or earlier were social­

ized to believe that marriages and/or committed romantic

bonds of any kind should take precedence over all other

relationships . Had I been evaluating my relationship from

a standpoint that emphasized growth rather than duty and

I 3 6

C()\'l\lU I" ITY: I.UVINC COMMUN I ON

obligation, I would have understood that abuse irrepara­

bly undermines bonds. All too often women believe it is

a sign of comm itment, an expression of love, to endure

unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget . In actuality,

when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving

response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of

harm's way. Even though I was a committed feminist as

a young woman, all that I knew and believed in politically

about equality was, fo r a time, overshadowed by a reli­

gious and familial upbringing that had socialized me to

believe everything must be done to save "the relation­

ship."

In retrospect, I see how ignorance about the art of lov­

ing placed the relationship at risk from the start. In the

more than fourteen years we were together we were too

busy repeating old patterns learned in childhood, acting

on misguided in forma tion about the nature of love, to ap­

preciate the changes we needed to make in ourselves to be

able to love someone else . Importantly, like many other

women and men (irrespective of sexual preference) who

are in relationships where they are the objects of intimate

terrorism, I would have been able to leave this relationship

sooner or recover myself within it had I brought to this

bond the level of respect, care, knowledge, and responsi­

bility I brought to friendships. Women who would no

more tolerate a friendship in which they were emotion­

ally and physically abused stay in romantic re lationships

r 3 7

where these violations occur regularly. Had they brought

to these bonds the same standards they bring to friendship

they would not accept victimization.

Naturally, when lIefr this long-term relationship, which

had taken so much time and energy, I was terribly alone

and lonely. I learned then that it is more fulfilling to live

one's life within a circle of love, interacting with loved

ones to whom we are committed. Lots of us learn this

lesson the hard way by finding ourselves alone and with­

out meaningful connection to friends. And it has been the

experience of both living in fear of abandonment in ro­

mantic relationships and being abandoned that has shown

us that the principles of love are always the same in any

meaningful bond . To love well is the task in all meaningful

relationships, not Just romantic bonds. I know individuals

who accept dishonesty in their primary relationships, or

who are themselves di shonest, when they would never ac­

cept it in friendships. Satisfying fri endships in which we

share mutual love provides a guide fo r behavior in other

relationships, incl uding romantic ones. They provide us all

with a way to know community.

Within a loving community we sustain ties by being

compassionate and forgiving . Eric Butterworth's Life Is

for Loving includes a chapter on " love and forgiveness ."

lnsightfully he writes: "We cannot endure without love

and there is no other way to the return of healing, com­

forting, harmonizing love than through total and complete

13 8

c: 0 M \1 U NIT Y : L 0 V INC; c: 0 M M U N ION

forgiveness : If we want freedom and peace and the expe­

rience of love and being loved, we must let go and for­

give." Forgiveness is an act of generosity . It requires that

we place releasing someone else from the prison of their

guilt or anguish over our fee lings of outrage or anger. By

forgiv ing we clear a path on the way to love. It is a gesture

of respect. True forgiveness requires that we understand

the negative actions of another.

While forgiveness is essential to spiritual growth, it does

not make everything immediately wonderful or fine. Of­

ten, New Age writing on the subject of love makes it seem

as though everything will always be wonderful if we are

just loving. Realistically, being part of a loving community

does not mean we will not fa ce conflicts, betrayals, nega­

tive outcomes from positive actions, o r bad things hap­

pening to good people . Love allows us to confront these

negative realities in a manner tha t is life-affirming and life­

enhancing. When a colleague whose work I admired,

whom I considered a friend, who for no reason that was

ever clear to me, began to write vicious attacks of my

work, I was stunned . H er critiques were full of lies and

exaggerations . I had been a caring friend . Her actions

hurt. To heal this pain I entered into an empathic identi ­

fication with her so that I could understand what might

have motivated her. In Forgiveness! A Bold Choice fo r a

Peaceful H eart, Robin Casarjian explains: "Forgiveness is

a way of li fe that gradua lly transforms us from being help-

I 3 9

Al.L AI>OL!T LllV E

less victims of our circumstances to being powerful and

loving 'co-creators' of our reality . ... It is the fading away

of the perceptions that cloud our ability to love."

Through the practice of compassion and forgiveness, I

was able to sustain my appreciation for her work and cope

with the grief and disappointment I felt about the loss of

this relationship. Practicing compassion enabled me to un­

derstand why she might have acted as she did and to for­

give her. Forgiving means that I am able to see her as a

member of my community still, one who has a place in

my heart should she wish to claim it .

We all long for loving community . It enhances life's joy.

But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear

of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to

the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with

others without using them as a means of escape. Through­

out his life theologian Henri Nouwen emphasized the

value of solitude. In many of his books and essays he dis­

couraged us from seeing solitude as being about the need

for privacy, sharing his sense that in solitude we find the

place where we can truly look at ourselves and shed the

fa lse self. In his book Reaching O ut, he stresses that " lone­

liness is one of the most universal sources of human suf­

fering today."

Nouwen contends that "no friend or lover, no husband

or wife, no community or commune will be able to put

to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness."

14 0

COMMUN ITY : l.O VING C OMMUNION

Wisely, he suggests we put those feelings to rest by em­

bracing our solititude, by allowing divine spirit to reveal

itself there : "The difficult road is the road of conversion,

the conversion from loneliness into solitude . Instead of

running away from our loneliness and trying to forget or

deny it, we have to protect it and turn it into fru itful

solitude . ... Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful.

Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; soli­

tude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and

create community." When children are taught to enjoy

quiet time, to be alone with their thoughts and reveries,

they carry this skill into adulthood. Individuals young and

old striving to overcome fe ars of being alone often choose

meditation practice as a way to embrace solitude. Learn­

ing how to "sit" in stillness and quietude can be the first

step toward knowing comfort in aloneness.

Moving from solitude into community heightens our ca­

pacity for fellowship with one another. Through fellow­

ship we learn how to serve one another. Service is another

dimension of communal love. At the end of her autobi­

ography The Wheel of Life, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross con­

fesses: "I can assure you that the greatest rewards in your

whole life will come from opening your heart to those in

need. The greatest blessings always come from helping."

Women have been and are the world's great teachers

about the meaning of service. We publicly honor the

memory of exceptional individuals like Mother Teresa

141

ALL AHOlJT LOVE

who have made a vocation of service, but there are women

everyone knows whose identities the world will never pub­

licly recognize who serve with patience, grace, and love.

All of us can learn from the example of these caring

women.

Earlier I was describing my impatience with my mother.

Looking at her life, I was awed by her service to others .

She taught me and all her children about the value and

meaning of service. As a child I witnessed her patient care

of the sick and dying. Without complaint she gave shelter

and aid to them. From her actions I learned the value of

giving freely . Remembering these actions is important. It

is so easy for all of us to forget the service women give to

others in everyday life- the sacrifices women make. Of­

ten, sexist thinking obscures the fact that these women

make a choice to serve, that they give from the space of

free will and not because of biological destiny. There are

plenty of folks who are not interested in serving, who dis­

parage service. When anyone thinks a woman who serves

"gives 'cause that's what mothers or real women do," they

deny her full humanity and thus fail to see the generosity

inherent in her acts. There are lots of women who are not

interested in service, who even look down on it.

The willingness to sacrifice is a necessary dimension of

loving practice and living in community. None of us can

have things our way all the time. Giving up something

IS one way we sustain a commitment to the collective

I 4 2

C 0 \ 1 :VI U NI T Y : l. 0 V INC C 0 1,,1 ,\ 1 U N I () N

well -being. Our willingness to make sacrifices ref1ects Our

awareness of interdependency. Writing about the need to

bridge the gulf between rich and poor, Martin Luther

King, Jr., preached: "All men land women] are caught in

an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single gar­

ment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all

indirectly." This gulf is bridged by the sharing of re­

sources. Every day, individuals who are not rich but who

are materially privileged make the choice to share with

others. Some of us share through conscious tithing (reg­

ularly giving a portion of one's income), and others

through a daily practice of loving kindness, giving to those

in need whom we randomly encounter. Mutual giving

strengthens community.

Enj oying the benefits of living and loving in community

empowers us to meet strangers without fear and extend

to them the gift of openness and recognition. Just by

speaking to a stranger, acknowledging their presence on

the planet, we make a connection. Every day we all have

an opportunity to practice the lessons learned in com ­

munity. Being kind and courteous connects us to one an­

other. In Peck's book The Different Drum, he reminds us

that the goal of genuine community is "to seek ways in

which to live with ourselves and others in love and peace."

Unlike other movements for social change that require

joining organizations and attending meetings, we can be­

gin the process of making community whe rever we are.

1 43

ALl. ABOUT l_ OVF

We can begin by sharing a smile, a warm greeting, a bit

of conversation; by doing a kind deed or by acknowledg- l

ing kindness offered us . Daily we can work to bring our

families into greater community with one another. My

brother was pleased when I suggested he think about mov­

ing to the same city where I live so that we could see each

other more. It enhanced his feeling of belonging. And it

made me feel loved that he wanted to be where I was.

Whenever I hear friends ta lk about estrangement from

family members, I encourage them to seek a path of heal­

ing, to seek the restoration of bonds . At one point my

sister, who is a lesbian, felt that she wanted to break

away from the family because fami ly members were often

homophobic. Affirming and sharing her rage and disap­

pointment, I also encouraged her to find ways to stay con­

nected. Over time she has seen major positive changes; she

has seen fear give way to understanding, which would not

have happened had she accepted estrangement as the only

response to the pain of rejection.

Whenever we heal family wounds, we strengthen com­

munity. Doing this, we engage in loving practice. That

love lays the foundation for the constructive building of

community with strangers . The love we make in com­

munity stays with us wherever we go. With this knowl­

edge as our guide, we make any place we go a place where

we return to love .

144

Nine

MUTUALITY:

THE HEART OF LOVE

True giving is a thoroughly joyous thing to do. We

experience happiness when we form the intention to

give, in the actual act of giving, and in the reco llection

of the fact that we have given. Generosity is a cele­

bration. When we give something to someone we feel

connected to them, and our commitment to the path

of peace and awareness deepens.

- S HA RON SALZ BE RG

LOVE ALLOW S US to entee paradise. Still, many

of us wait outside the gates, unable to cross the thresh­

hold, unable to leave behind all the stuff we have accu­

mulated that gets in the way of love. If we have not been

guided on love's path for most of our lives, we usually do

not know how to begin loving, or what we should do and

how we should act. M uch of the despair young people feel

about love comes from their belief that they are doing

everything "right" or that they have done everything right

and love is still not happening. Their efforts to love and

be loved just produce stress, strife, and perpetual discon­

tent.

In my twenties and early thirties I was confident I knew

what love was all about. Yet every time I "fell in love" I

found myself in pain. The two most intense partnerships

of my life were both with men who are adult children of

alcoholic fathers. Neither has memories of interacting

147

ALL ;\ 1\ 0 UI l. 0 V

positively with his fa ther. Both were ra ised by divorced

working mothers who never married again. They were

similar in temperament to my dad: quiet, hardworking,

and emotionally withholding . I can remember when I took

the fi rst man home. My sisters were shocked tha t he was,

in their eyes, "so much like Daddy" and "you've always

hated Daddy." At the time I thought this was ridiculous,

both the notion I hated Dad and the idea that my chosen

life partner was in anyway like him- no way.

After fifteen years with this partner, I realized not only

how much he was like Dad, I also came face to face with

my desperate longing to get the love from him I had not

gotten from my father. I wanted him to become both the

loving dad and a loving partner, thereby offering me a

space of healing. In my fantasy, if he would just love me,

give me all the care I had not gotten as a child, it would

mend my broken spirit and I would be able to trust and

love again . He was unable to do this. H e had never been

schooled in the way of love. Groping in the shadows of

love as much as I was, together we made serious mistakes.

He wanted from me the unconditional love and service his

mother had always given him without expecting anything

in return. Constantly frustrated by his indifference to the

needs of others and his smug conviction that this was the

way life should be, I tried to do the emotional work for

both of us .

Needless to say, I did not get the love I longed fo r. I

I 4 8

1\1 U T U ALI T Y: T H F !-I EAR -I 0 j. L 0 V E

did get to rema in in a familiar familial place of struggle.

We were engaged in a private gender war. In this battle I

fought to destroy the Mars and Ven us model so we could

break from preconceived ideas about gender ro les and be

true to our inner longings. He remained wedded to a para­

digm of sexual difference that had at its root the assump­

tion that men are inherently different from women, wi th

different emotional needs and longings. In his mind, my

problem was my refusal to accept these "natural " roles.

Like many liberal men in the age of feminism, he believed

women should have equal access to jobs and be given

equal pay, but when it came to matters of home and

heart he still believed caregiving was the female role. Like

many men, he wanted a woman to be " just like his

mama " so tha t he did not have to do the work of grow­

mg up.

He was the type of man described by psychologist Dan

Kiley in his groundbreaking work The Peter Pan Syn­

drome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. Published in

the early eighties, the jacket noted that this book was

about a serious social-psychological phenomenon be­

setting American males-their refusal to become men:

"Though they have reached adult age, they are unable to

face adult feelings with responsibilities. Out of touch with

their true emotions, afraid to depend on even those closest

to them, self-centered and narcissistic, they hide behind

masks of normalcy while feel ing empty and lonely inside."

I 4 9

,\ LL ABOUT LO VE

This new generation of American men had experienced the

feminist cultural revolution. Many of them had been

raised in homes where fathers were not present. They were

more than happy when feminist th inkers told them that

they did not need to be macho men. But the only alter­

native to not turning into a conventional macho man was

to not become a man at all, to remain a boy.

By choosing to remain boys they did not have to un­

dergo the pain of severing the too-t ight bonds with moth­

ers who had smothered them with unconditional care.

They could just find women to care for them in the same

way that their moms had. When women fa iled to be like

Mom, they acted out. Initially, as a young militant femi­

nist, I was th rilled to find a man who was not into being

the patriarch. And even the task of dragging him kicking

and screaming into adulthood seemed worthwhile. In the

end I believed I would have an equal partner, love between

peers. But the price I paid for wanting him to become an

adult was that he traded in his boyish playfulness and

became the macho man I had never wanted to be with. I

was the target of his aggression, blamed for cajoling him

into leaving boyhood behind, and blamed for his fears that

he was not up to the task of being a man. By the time our

relationship ended, I had blossomed into a fully self­

actualized feminist woman but I had almost lost my faith

in the transformative power of love. My heart was broken.

I left the relationship fea rful that our culture was not yet

15 0

MUTUALITY: rHE I-IEART OF LOVE

ready to affirm mutual love between free women and free

men.

IN MY SEC 0 N D partnership, with a much younger

man, similar power struggles surfaced as he grappled with

coming into full adulthood in a society where manhood is

always equated with dominance. He was not dominating.

But he had to confront a world tha t saw our relationship

solely in terms of power, of who was in charge. Whereas

some people had often seen my older partner's silence as

intimidating and threatening- a sign of his " power"­

my younger partner' s silence was usually interpreted as a

consequence of my dominance . Initially, I was attracted

to this younger partner because his "masculinity" repre­

sented an alternative to the patriarchal norm. Ultimately,

however, he did not feel that mascul inity affirmed in the

larger world and began to rely more on conventional

thinking about masculine and feminine roles, allowing

sexist socialization to shape his actions. Observing his

struggle I saw how little support men received when they

chose to be disloyal to patriarchy. Although these two lib­

eral men were more than two generations apart, neither

had given the question of love much thought. Despite their

support of gender equality in the public sphere, privately,

deep down, they st ill saw love as a woman's issue. To

them, a relationship was about finding someone to take

care of all their needs.

15 1

A I. I. ,\ Il () til 1 () V 1-_

In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want

power an d women want emotional attachment and con­

nection . On this planet nobody really has the opportunity

to know Jove since it is pO\ver and not love that is the

order of the day . The privilege of power is at the heart of

patriarcha l thinking . Girls and boys, women and men who

have been taught to think this way almost always believe

love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important

as being powerful, dominant, in control , on top-being

right. Women who give seemingly selfless adoration and

care to the men in their lives appear to be obsessed with

"love," but in actuality the ir actions are often a covert

way to hold power. Like their male counterparts, they en­

ter relationships speaking the words of love even as their

actions indicate that maintaining power and control is

their primary agenda . This does not mean that care and

affection are not present; they are. This is precisely why

it is so difficult for women, and some men, to leave rela­

tionships where the central dynamic is a struggle for

power. The fact that th is sadomasoch istic power dynam ic

can and usually does coexist with affection, care, tender­

ness, and loyalty makes it easy for power-driven individu­

als to deny their agendas, even to themselves. Their

positive actions give hope that love will prevai l.

Sadly, love will not prevail in any situation where one

party, either female or male, wants to maintain control.

My relationships were bittersweet. All the ingredients for

1 5 2

,\1 li T LJ ,\ [ , IT Y: I' II L II i, ,\ R T () [ I. U V r:

love were present but my partners were not committed to

making love the order of the day . When someone has not

known love it is difficult for him to trust that mutual sat­

isfaction and growth can be the primary fo undation in a

coupling relati onship . He may only understand and be­

lieve in the dynam ics of power, of one-up and one-down,

of a sadomasochistic struggle for domination, and,

ironically, he may feel " safer" when he is operating wi thin

these paradigms. Intimate with betrayal, he may have a

phobic fear of trust . At least when you hold to the dy­

namics of power you never have to fear the unknown; you

know the ru les of the power game. Whatever happens, the

outcome can be predicted. The practice of love offers no

place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being

acted upon by forces outside our control.

When individuals are wounded in the space where they

would know love during childhood, that wounding may be

so traumatic that any attempt to reinhabit that space feels

utterly unsafe and, at times, seemingly life-threatening.

This is especia lly the case for males. Females, no matter our

childhood traumas, are given cultural support for cultivat­

ing an interest in love . W hile sexist logic underlies this

support, it still means that females a re much more likely

to receive encouragement both to think about love and to

value its meaning. O ur overt longing for love can be ex­

pressed and affirmed. This does not, however, mean that

women are more able to love than men .

J .5 3

ALl AB()U"I I.OVE

Females are encouraged by patriarchal thinking to be- '

lieve we should be loving, but this does not mean we are

any more emotionally equipped to do the work of love

than our male counterparts . Afraid of love, many of us

focus more on finding a partner. The widespread success

of books like Th e Rules: Time-tested Secrets for Capturing

the Heart o f M r. Righ t, which encourage women to de­

ceive and manipulate to get a partner, express the cynicism

of our times. These books validate the old-fashioned sexist

notions of sexual difference and encourage women to be­

lieve that no relationship between a man and a woman

can be based on mutual respect, openness, and caring. The

message they give women is that relationships are always

and only about power, manipulation, and coercion, about

getting someone else to do what you want them to, even

if it is against their will. They teach females how to use

feminine wi les to play the game of power but they do not

offer guidelines for how to love and be loved.

Much popular self-help literature normali zes seXIsm.

Rather than linking habits of being, usually considered

innate, to learned behavior that helps maintain and sup­

port male domination, they act as though these differences

are not value laden or political but are ra ther inherent and

mystical. In these books male inability andlor refusal to

honestly express feelings is often talked about as a positive

masculine virtue women should learn to accept rather than

a learned habit of behavior tha t creates emotional isola -

I 5 4

Il,lUTUAL1TY: THE HE .-\RT OF LOVE

tion and alienation. John Gray refers to this as "men en­

tering their cave," and posits it as a given that a woman

who disturbs her man when he wants isolation will be

punished. Gray believes that it is female behavior that

needs to change. Self-help books that are anti-gender

equality often present women's overinvestment in nurtur­

ance as a "natural," inherent quality rather than a learned

approach to caregiving. Much fancy footwork takes place

to make it seem that New Age mystical evocations of yin

and yang, masculine and feminine androgyny, and so on,

are not just the same old sexist stereotypes wrapped in

more alluring and seductive packaging.

To know love we must surrender our attachment to sex­

ist thinking in whatever form it takes in our lives . That

attachment will always return us to gender conflict, a way

of thinking about sex roles that diminishes fema les and

males . To practice the art of loving we have first to choose

love-admit to ourselves that we want to know love and

be loving even if we do not know what that means . The

deeply cynical, who have lost all belief in love's power,

have to step blindly out on fa ith . In The Path to Love,

Deepak Chopra urges us to remember that everything love

is meant to do is possible: "The aching need created by

lack of love can only be filled by learning anew to love

and be loved. We all must discover for ourselves that

love is a force as real as gravity, and that being upheld in

love every day, every hour, every minute is not a fantasy-

155

ALI :\I\OUT LOV[

it is intended as our natural state." Most males are not

told that they need to be upheld by love every day. Sexist

thinking usually prevents them from acknowledging their

longing for love or their acceptance of a female as their

guide on love's path.

More often than not fe males are ta ught in childhood,

either by parental caregivers or the mass media, how to

give the basic care that is part of the practice of love. We

are shown how to be empathic, how to nurture, and, most

important, how to listen. Usually we are not socialized in

these practices so that we can be loving or share knowl­

edge of love with men, but rather so that we can be ma­

ternal in relation to children. Indeed, most adult females

readily abandon their basic understanding of the ways one

shows care and respect (important ingredients of love) to

resocialize themselves so that they can unite with patri­

archal partners (male or female) who know nothing about

love or the basic rudiments of caregiving. A woman who

would never submit to a child calling her abusive names

and humiliating her allows such behavior from a man. The

respect woman demand and uphold in the maternal-child

bond is deemed not important in adult bondings if de­

manding respect from a man interferes with their desire

to get and keep a partner .

Few parental caregivers teach their children to lie. Yet

continual lying, either through overt deception or with­

holding, is often deemed acceptable and excusable adult

15 6

I .•• "

I

ivl U TU /\LITY: THE HEART OF LOVE

male behavior. Choosing to be honest is the first step in

the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who

deceives . Once the choice has been made to be honest,

then the next step on love's path is communication . Writ­

ing about the importance of listening in The Healing of

America, Marianne Williamson calls attention to philoso­

pher Paul Tillich's insistence that the first responsibility of

love is to listen: "We cannot learn to communicate deeply

until we learn to listen, to each other but also to ourselves

and to God. Devotional silence is a powerful tool, for the

healing of a heart or the healing of a nation .... From

there we move up to the next rung on the ladder of heal­

ing: our capacity to so communicate our authentic truth

as to heal and be healed by its power." Listening does not

simply mean we hear other voices when they speak but

that we also learn to listen to the voice of our own hearts

as well as inner voices .

Getting in touch with the lovelessness within and letting

that lovelessness speak its pain is one way to begin again

on love's journey. In relationships, whether heterosexual

or homosexual, the partner who is hurting often finds that

their mate is unwilling to "hear" the pain. Women often

tell me that they feel emotionally beaten down when their

partners refuse to listen or talk. When women communi­

cate from a place of pain, it is often characterized as

"nagging." Sometimes women hear repeatedly that their

partners are "sick of listening to this shit ." Both cases

I 5 7

ALl. ABOUT LUVE

undermine self-esteem. Those of us who were wounded in

childhood often were shamed and humiliated when we " '~

expressed hurt . It is emotionally devastating when the

partners we have chosen will not listen. Usually, partners

who are unable to respond compassionately when hearing

us speak our pain, whether they understand it or not, are

unable to listen because that expressed hurt triggers their

own feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Many men

never want to feel helpless or vulnerable. They will, at

times, choose to silence a partner with violence rather than

witness emotional vulnerability. When a couple can iden­

tify this dynamic, they can work on the issue of caring,

listening to each other's pain by engaging in short con­

versations at appropriate times (i .e., it 's useJess to try and

speak your pain to someone who is bone weary, irritable,

preoccupied, etc.). Setting a time when both individuals

come together to engage in compassionate listening en­

hances communication and connection. When we are

committed to doing the work of love we listen even when

it hurts.

M. Scott Peck 's popular treatise The Road Less Trav­

eled highlighted and affirmed the importance of commit­

ment. Discipline and devotion are necessary to the practice

of love, all the more so when relationships are just begin­

ning. Peck writes: "Whether it be shallow or not, com­

mitment is the foundation, the bedrock of any genuinely

loving relationship. Deep commitment does not guarantee

15 8

'vlUTUAI.ITY: THE HE A RT OF LOVE

the success of the relationship but does help more than

any other factor to ensure it. ... Anyone who is truly con­

cerned for the spiritual growth of another knows, con­

sciously or instinctively, that he or she can significantly

foster that growth only through a relationship of con­

stancy." Living in a culture where we are encouraged to

seek a quick release from any pain or discomfort has fos­

tered a nation of individuals who are easily devastated by

emotional pain, however relative. When we face pain in

relationships, our first response is often to sever bonds

rather than to maintain commitment.

When conflict arises wi thin us or between us and other

individuals when we walk on love's path, it is dishearten­

ing, especially when we cannot easily right our difficulties.

In the case of romantic relationships, many people fear get­

ting trapped in a bond that is not working, so they flee at

the onset of conflict. Or they self-indulgently create unnec­

essary conflict as a way to avoid commitment. They flee

from love before they feel its grace. Pain may be the thresh­

old they must cross to partake of love's bliss. Running from

the pain , they never know the fullness of love's pleasure.

False notions of love teach us that it is the place where

we will feel no pain, where we will be in a state of con­

stant bliss. We have to expose the falseness of these beliefs

to see and accept the reality that suffe ring and pain do

not end when we begin to love. In some cases when we

are making the slow journey back from lovelessness to

159

,'I.[ AHUUT LOVE

love , our suffering may become more intense . As the lyrics

of old-time spirituals testify, "Weeping may endure for a

night but joy will come in the morning." Acceptance of

pain is part of loving practice. It enables us to distinguish

constructive suffering from self-indulgent hurt . When

love's promise has never been fulfilled in our lives it is

perhaps the most difficult practice of love to trust that the

passage through the painful abyss leads to paradise . Guy

Comeau suggests in Lessons in Love that many men are

so fearful of feeling the emotional pain that has been

locked away inside them for so long that they willingly

choose a life of lovelessness: "A good number of men sim­

ply decide not to commit themselves because they cannot

face dealing with the emotional pain of love and the con­

flict it engenders." Women are often belittled for trying to

resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to

love. They are, in fact, the real sleeping beauties. We might

be living in a world that would be even more alienated

and violent if caring women did not do the work of teach­

ing men who have lost touch with themselves how to live

again. This labor of love is futi le only when the men in

question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it

is a gesture of self-love for women to break their com­

mitment and move on.

Women have endeavored to guide men to love because

patriarchal thinking has sanctioned this work even as it

has undermined it by teaching men to refuse guidance. It

160

.\ 1 11 T tI i\ liT Y T 11 1 II JC .\ RI () F l. U V l::

sets up a gendered arrangement in which men are more

likely to get their emotional needs met while women will

be deprived. Getting your emotional needs met helps cre­

ate greater psychologica l well-being . As a consequence,

men are given an advantage that nea tl y coincides with the

patriarchal insis tence that they are superior and therefore

better suited to rule others. Were women's emotional

needs met , were mutuality the no rm, male domination

might lose its allure. Sadly, the men's movement that

emerged in response to the feminist critique of sexist mas­

culinity often encouraged men to get in touch with their

feeling but to share them only in a "safe" context, usually

only w ith other men . Robert Bly, a major leader of this

movement, had little to say about men and love. Men in

the movement did not urge one another to look to enlight­

ened women for guidance in the way of love .

Those who choose to walk on love 's path are well

served if they have a guide . That guide can ena ble us to

overcome fear if we trust that they will not lead us astray

or abandon us along the way. I am always amazed by how

much courageous trust we offer strangers. We get sick and

enter hospitals where we put our trust in a collective body

of people we don't know, who we hope will make us well.

Yet we often fear placing our emotional trust in caring

individuals who may have been fa ithful friends all our

lives . This is simply misguided thinking. And it must be

overcome if we are to be transformed by love.

161

AL.L ABOU T I (l V E

The practice of love takes time. Without a doubt, the

way we work in this society leaves individuals with little

time when they are not physically and emotionally tired

to work on the art of loving. How many times do we hear

anyone say that they were working so hard and had no

t ime for love, so they had to cut back or even leave a job

to make a space to be loving? While movies like Regarding

Henry and The Fisher King spin sentimental narratives

about ruling-class men suffering li fe-threatening illnesses

that lead them to reevaluate how they spend their time, in

rea l life we have yet to see abundant examples of powerful

men or women pausing to create a place to do the work

of Jove in their lives . Certainly, individuals who love some­

one who is more preoccupied by work fee l immense frus­

tration when they endeavor to guide their partner in the

way of love. Truly, there would no unemployment prob­

lem in our nation if our taxes subsidized schools where

everyone could learn to love. Job sharing could become

the norm. With love at the center of our lives, work could

have a diffe rent meaning and focus.

When we practice love, we want to give more . Selfish­

ness, a refusal to give acceptance to another, is a central

reason romantic relationships fail. In Love the Way You

Want It, Robert Sternberg confirms: "If I were asked the

single most frequent cause of the destruction of relation­

ships ... I would say it is selfishness. We live in an age of

narc issism and many people have never learned or have

162

MUTUALITY: THE HEART OF LOVE

forgotten how to listen to the needs of others. The truth

is , if you want to make just one change in yourself that

will improve your relationship- literally, overnight- it

would be to put your partner's interest on an equal foot­

ing with your own." Giving generously in romantic reI a -

rionships, and in all other bonds, means recognizing when

the other person needs our attention . Attention is an im­

portant resource .

Generous sharing of all resources is one concrete way

to express love. These resources can be time, attention,

material objects, skills, money etc ... Once we embark on

love's path we see how easy it is to give . A useful gift all

love's practitioners can give is the offering of forgiveness .

It not only allows us to move away from blame, from

seeing others as the cause of our sustained lovelessness,

but it enables us to experience agency, to know we can be

responsible for giving and finding love. We need not blame

others for feelings of lack, for we know how to attend to

them. We know how to give ourselves love and to rec­

ognize the love that is all around us. Much of the anger

and rage we feel about emotional lack is released when

we forgive ourselves and others. Forgiveness opens us up

and prepares us to receive love. It prepares the way for us

to give wholeheartedly.

Giving brings us into communion with everyone. It is

one way for us to understand that there is truly enough

of everything for everybody. In the Christian tradition we

16 3

I\LL ABOU T LOVE

are told that giving "opens the windows of heaven" so

that we can be offered "a blessing that there will not be ~

room enough to receive." In patriarchal society men who

wa nt to break with domination can best begin the practice

of love by being giving, by being generous. This is why

fe minist thinkers extolled the virtues of male parenting.

Working as caregivers to young children, many men are

able to experience for the first time the joy that comes

from service.

Through giving to each other we learn how to experi­

ence mutuality. To heal the gender war rooted in struggles

for power, women and men choose to make mutuality the

basis of thei r bond, ensuring that each person's growth

matters and is nurtured. It enhances our power to know

joy. In A Heart As Wide As the World, Sharon Salzberg

reminds us: "The practice of generosity frees us from the

sense of isolation that arises from clinging and attach­

ment." Cultivating a generous heart, which is, as Salzberg

writes, "the primary quality of an awakened mind,"

strengthens romantic bonds. Giving is the way we also

learn how to receive. The mutual practice of giving and

receiving is an everyday ritual when we know true love .

A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive

our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need

never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift

true love offers-the experience of knowing we always

belong.

[ 6 4

..

M U T U /\ LIT Y: I 1-/ F H E i\ R T 0 FlO V E

Giving is healing to the spirit. We are admonished by

spiritual tradi tion to give gifts to those who would know

love. Love is an action, a participatory emotion. Whether

we are engaged in a process of self-love or of loving others

we must move beyond the realm of feeling to actualize

love . This is why it is useful to see love as a practice . When

we act, we need not fee l inadequate or powerless; we can

trust that there are concrete steps to take on love's path.

We learn to communicate, to be sti ll and listen to the

needs of our hearts, and we learn to listen to others. We

learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain, as well

as the joy, of those we love. The path to love is not ar­

duous or hidden, bu t we must choose to take the fi rst step.

If we do not know the way, there is always a loving spirit

with an enlightened, open mind able to show us how to

take the path that leads to the heart of love, the path that

lets us return to love .

16 5

Ten

ROMANCE:

SWEET LOVE

Sweet Love say

Where, how and when

What do YO Ll want of me? ..

Y OLlrs [ am, for Y OLl I was born:

What do YOLl wa nt of me ? . .

-SAINT TERESA OF AVILA

o RETURN TO love, to get the love we always

wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are

not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We

believe these relationships, more than any other, will res­

cue and redeem us. True love does have the power to re­

deem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves

us only if we want to be saved. So many seekers after love

are taught in childhood to feel unworthy, that nobody

could love them as they really are, and they construct a

false self. In adult life they meet people who fall in love

with their false self. But this love does not last. At some

point, glimpses of the real self emerge and disappointment

comes. Rejected by their chosen love, the message received

in childhood is confirmed: Nobody could love them as

they really are.

Few of us enter romantic relationships able to receive

love. We fall into romantic attachments doomed to replay

169

,\ L l. .-\ B U UTI. 0 V E

familiar family d,·ramas. Usually we do not know this will '~.""

happen precisely because we have grown up in a culture ,

that has told us that no matter what we experienced in ~

our childhoods, no matte r the pain, sorrow, alienation,

emptiness , no matter the extent of our dehumanization,

romantic love will be ours. We believe we will meet the

girl of our dreams. We believe "someday our prince will

come." They show up just as we imagined they would.

We wanted the lover to appear but most of us were not

rea lly clear about what we wanted to do with them- what

the love was that we wanted to make and how we would

make it. We were not ready to open our hearts fully.

In her first book, The Bluest Eye, novelist Toni Morri­

son identifies the idea of romantic Jove as one "of the most

destructive ideas in the history of human thought." Its

destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love

with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, per­

petuated by so much romantic lore, stands in the way of

our learning how to love. To sustain our fantasy we sub­

stitute romance for love.

When romance is depicted as a project, or so the mass

media , especially movies, would have us believe, women

are the architects and the planners. Everyone likes to

lmagme that women are romantics, sentimental about

love, that men follow where women lead. Even in non­

heterosexual relationsh ips, the paradigms of leader and

fo llower often prevail, with one person assuming the role

1 7 0

ROMANCE: SWEET LOVE

deemed feminine and another the designated masculine

role. No doubt it was someone playing the role of leader

who conjured up the notion that we " fall in love," that

we lack choice and decision when choosing a partner be­

cause when the chemistry is present, when the click is

there, it just happens-it overwhelms-it takes control.

This way of thinking about love seems to be especially

useful for men who are socialized via patriarchal notions

of masculinity to be out of touch with what they feel. In

the essay "Love and Need," Thomas Merton contends:

"The expression to 'fall in love' reflects a peculiar attitude

toward love and life itself-a mixture of fear, awe, fasci­

nation, and confusion. It implies suspicion, doubt, hesi­

tation in the presence of something unavoidable, yet not

fully reliable." If you do not know what you feel , then it

is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do

not have to be responsible for your actions.

Even though psychoanalysts, from Fromm writing 111

the fifties to Peck in the present day, critique the idea that

we fall in love, we continue to invest in the fantasy of

effortless union. We continue to believe we are swept

away, caught up in the rapture, that we lack choice and

will. In The Art of Loving, Fromm repeatedly talks about

love as action, "essentially an act of will." He writes: "To

love somebody is not just a strong feeling-it is a decis ion,

it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling,

there would be no basis for the promise to love each other

I 7 I

AL L :\BOU"\ l.OVE

fo rever. A feeling comes and it may gO." Peck builds UPon

Fromm's definition when he describes love as the will to

nurture one' s own or another's spiritua l growth, adding:

"The desire to love is not itself love. Love is as love does.

Love is an act of will-namely, both an intention and ac­

tion . Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We

choose to love." Despite these brilliant insights and the

wise counsel they offer, most people remain reluctant to

embrace the idea that it is more genuine, more real, to

think of choosing to love rather than falling in love.

Describing our romantic longings in Life Preservers,

therapist Harriet Lerner shares that most people want a

partner "who is mature and intelligent, loyal and trustwor­

thy, loving and attentive, sensitive and open, kind and nur­

turant, competent and responsible." No matter the

intensity of this desire, she concludes : "Few of us evaluate a

prospective partner with the same objectivity and clarity

that we might use to select a household appliance or a car."

To be capable of critically evaluating a partner we would

need to be able to stand back and look critically at our­

selves, at our needs, desires, and longings. It was difficult

for me to really take out a piece of paper and evaluate my­

self to see if I was able to give the love I wanted to receive.

And even more difficult to make a list of the qualities I

wanted to find in a mate . I listed ten items. And then when

I applied the list to men I had chosen as potential partners,

17 2

ROMANCE: SWEET l. OVE

it was painful to face the discrepancy between what I

wanted and what I had chosen to accept. We fear that eval­

uating our needs and then carefully choosing partners will

reveal that there is no one for us to love. Most of us prefer

to have a partner who is lacking than no partner at all.

What becomes apparent is that we may be more interested

in finding a partner than in knowing love.

Time and time again when I talk to individuals about

approaching love with will and intentiona lity, I hear the

fear expressed that this will bring an end to romance. This

is simply not so. Approaching romantic love from a foun­

dation of care, knowledge, and respect actually intensifies

romance. By taking the time to communicate with a po­

tential mate we are no longer trapped by the fear and

anxiety underlying romantic interactions that take place

without discussion or the sharing of intent and desire. I

talked with a woman friend who stated that she had al­

ways been extremely fearful of sexual encounters, even

when she knew someone well and desired them. Her fear

was rooted in a shame she felt about the body, sentiments

she had learned in childhood. Previously, her encounters

with men had only intensified that shame. Usually men

made light of her anxiety. I suggested she might try meet­

ing with the new man in her life over lunch with the set

agenda of talking to him about sexual pleasure, their likes

and dislikes, their hopes and fears. She reported back that

173

ALI. ABOUT I.OVE

the lunch was incredibly erotic; it laid the groundwork for "4 . 1

them to be at ease wIth each other sexually when they ';

finally reached that stage in their relationship.

EROTIC ATTRACTION OFTEN serves as the catalyst

for an intimate connection between two people, but it is

not a sign of love. Exciting, pleasurable sex can take place

between two people who do not even know each other.

Yet the vast majority of males in our society are convinced

that their erotic longing indicates who they should, and

can, love. Led by their penis, seduced by erotic desire, they

often end up in relationships with partners with whom

they share no common interests or values. The pressure

on men in a patriarchal society to "perform" sexually is

so great that men are often so gratified to be with someone

with whom they find sexual pleasure that they ignore

everything else. They cover up these mistakes by working

too much, or finding playmates they like outside their

committed marriage or partnership. It usually takes them

a long time to name the lovelessness they may feel. And

this recognition usually has to be covered up to protect

the sexist insistence that men never admit failure.

Women rarely choose men solely on the basis of erotic

connection. While most females acknowledge the impor­

tance of sexual pleasure, they recognize that it is not the

only ingredient needed to build strong relationships. And

let's fa ce it, the sexism of stereotyping women as caregiv-

I 7 4

ROMANCE : SW EET l.OVE

ers makes it acceptable for women to articulate emotional

needs. So females are socialized to be more concerned

about emotional connection. \'\1omen who have only

named their erotic hunger in the wake of the permission

given by the feminist movement and sexual libe ration have

always been able to speak the ir hunger for love . This does

not mean that we find the love we long for. Like males,

we often settle for lovelessness because we are attracted

to other aspects of a partner's makeup. Shared sexual pas­

sion can be a sustaining and binding force in a troub led

relationship, but it is not the proving ground for love.

This is one of the great sadnesses of life. Too often

women, and some men, have their most intense erotic

pleasure with partners who wound them in other ways.

The intensity of sexual intimacy does not serve as a cata­

lyst for respect, care, trust, understanding, and commit­

ment. Couples who rare ly or never have sex can know

lifelong love. Sexual pleasure enhances the bonds of love,

but they can exist and satisfy when sexual desire is absent.

Ultimately, most of us wou ld choose great love over sus­

tained sexual passion if we had to . Luckily we do not have

to make this choice because we usually have satisfying

erotic pleasure with our loved one.

The best sex and the most satisfying sex are not the

same. I have had great sex with men who were intimate

terrorists , men who seduce and attract by giving you just

what you feel your heart needs then gradually O[ abruptly

175

'\ i . [ \ II () II TIl) V I

withholding it once they have gained your trust . And I

have been deeply sexually fu lfilled in bonds with loving

partners who have had less skill and know-how. Because

of sexist socializa tion, women tend to put sexual satisfac­

tion in its appropriate perspective. We acknowledge its

value without allowing it to become the absolute measure

of intimate connection. Enlightened women want fulfilling

erotic encounters as much as men, but we ultimately pre­

fer erotic satisfaction within a context where there is lov­

ing, intimate connection. If men were socia lized to desire

love as much as they are taught to desire sex, we would

see a cultural revolution. As it stands, most men tend to

be more concerned about sexual performance and sexual

satisfaction than whether they are capable of giving and

receiving love .

Even though sex matters, most of us are no more able

to articulate sexual needs and longings than we are able

to speak our desire for Jove. Ironically, the presence of

life-threatening sexually transmitted diseases has become

the reason more couples communicate with each other

about erotic behavior. The very people (many of them

men ) who had heretofore claimed that "too much talk "

made things less romantic find that talk does not threaten

pleasure at all. It merely changes its nature. Where once

knowing nothing was the basis for excitement and erotic

intensity, knowing more is now the basis. Lots of people

who fea red a loss of romantic and/or erotic intensity made

1 7 6

R U ,\1 i\ C.J (' L: S \XI F E ' [ L () V L

th is radical change in their thinking and were surprised to

find that their previous assumptions tha t talk killed ro-

mance were wrong.

Cultural acceptance of this change shows that we are

a ll capable of sh ifting our paradigms, the foundational

ways of thinking and doing things that become habitual.

We are all capable of changing our attitudes about "falling

in love ." We can acknowledge the "click" we fee l when

we meet someone new as just that- a mysterious sense of

connection that mayor may not have anything to do with

love. However it could or could not be the primal con­

nection while simultaneously acknowledging that it will

lead us to love. How different things might be if, ra ther

than saying " I think I'm in love," we were saying "I've

connected with someone in a way that makes me think

I'm on the way to knowing love." Or if instead of saying

"I am in love" we said "I am loving" or " I will love."

Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change

if we do not change our language.

We are all uncomfortable with the conventional ex­

pressions we use to talk about romantic love. All of us

feel that these expressions and the thinking behind them

are one of the reasons we entered relationships that did

not work. In retrospect we see that to a grave extent the

way we talked about these bonds foreshadowed what hap­

pened in the relationship. I certainly changed the way I

ta lk and think about love in response to the emotiona l

177

A l. l. A II () U T L 0 V E

lack I felt within myself and in my re lationships. Starting

with clear defin itions of love , of feeling, intention, and ! wi ll , I no longer enter relationships with the lack of aware- l

ness that leads me to make all bonds the site for repeating = old patterns.

Although I have experienced many disappointments in

my quest to love and be loved, I sti ll believe in the transfor­

mative power of love. Disappointment has not led me to

close my heart. However, the more I ta lk with people

around me I find disappointment to be widespread and it

does lead many folks to feel profound ly cynical about love.

A lot of people simply think we make too much of love.

Our culture may make much of love as compelling fantasy

or myth, but it does not make much of the art of loving.

Our disappointment about love is directed at romantic

love. We fai l at romantic love when we have not learned the

art of loving. It's as simple as that. Often we confuse perfect

passion with perfect love. A perfect passion happens when

we meet someone who appears to have everything we have

wanted to find in a partner. I say "appears" because the in­

tensity of our connection usually blinds us. We see what we

want to see . In Soul Mates, Thomas Moore contends that

the enchantment of romantic illusion has its place and that

"the soul thrives on ephemeral fantasies ." While perfect

passion provides us with its own particular pleasure and

danger, for those of us seeking perfect love it can only ever

be a preliminary stage in the process.

17 8

t

ROMANCE : SWEET LOVE

We can only move from perfect passion to perfect love

when the illusions pass and we are able to use the energy

and intensity generated by intense, overwhelming, erotic

bonding to heighten self-discovery. Perfect passions usu­

ally end when we awaken from our enchantment and find

only that we have been carried away from ourselves. It

becomes perfect love when our passion gives us the cour­

age to face reality, to embrace our true selves. Acknowl­

edging this meaningful link between perfect passion and

perfect love from the onset of a relationship can be the

necessary inspiration that empowers us to choose love.

When we love by intention and will, by showing care,

respect, knowledge, and responsibility, our love satisfies.

Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment

in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these as­

sumptions because this despair is actually easier to face

than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent

from their lives.

In the last two years I have talked a lot about love. My

topic has been "true love." It all started when I began to

speak my heart's desire, to say to friends, lecture audi­

ences, folks sitting next to me on buses and planes and in

restaurants that "I was looking for true love." Cynically,

almost all my listeners would let me know that I was look­

ing for a myth . The few who still believe in true love of­

fered their deep conviction that "you can't look for it, "

that if it's meant for you "it wi ll just happen." Not only

179

ALL ABOLIT LOVE

do I believe wholeheartedly that true love exists, I embrace

the idea that its occurence is a mystery-that it happens

without any effort of human will. And if tha t's the case,

then it will happen whether we look for it or not. But we

do not lose love by looking for it. Indeed, those among us

who have been hurt, disappointed, disillusioned must

open our hearts if we want love to enter. That act of open­

ing is a way of seeking love .

I have had a tas te of true love. That experience inten­

sifies my longing and my desire to search. A true love in

my life first appeared to me in a dream. I had been invited

to a conference on fi lm and was reluctant to attend . I hate

being bombarded by lots of new ideas at one time; it feels

to me like overeating. Yet I had a dream in which I was

told that if I went to this conference I would meet a man

of my dreams. Images in the dream were so vivid and real

that I awakened with a sense of necessity. I called a girl­

friend and told her my story. She agreed to go to the con­

ference with me, as my witness. A few weeks later we

arrived at the conference in the middle of a session in

which speakers were onstage. I pointed to the man whose

image had appeared in my dream. After the session I met

him and we talked. Meeting him was like seeing a long­

lost relative or friend. We went to dinner. There was a

feeling of mutual recognition between us from the start .

It was as though we knew each other. As our conversation

progressed he told me he was in a committed relationship.

r 8 0

ROMANCE: SWEFT l.()VF

I was puzzled and disturbed . I could not believe divine

forces in the universe would lead me to this man of my

dreams when there was no rea l possibility of fully realizing

those dreams. Of course, those dreams were all about be­

ing in a romantic re lationship. That was the beginning of

a difficult lesson in true love .

I LEARNED THAT we may meet a true love and that

our lives may be transformed by such an encounter even

when it does not lead to sexual pleasure, committed

bonding, or even sustained contact. The myth of trLle

love- that fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join,

and live happily thereafter- is the stuff of childhood fan­

tasy. Yet many of us, female and male, carry these fan­

tasies into adulthood and are unable to cope with the

reality of what it means either to have an intense life­

altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing rela­

tionship or to be in a relationship. True love does not

always lead to happily ever after, and even when it does,

sustaining love still takes work.

All relationships have ups and downs. Romantic fantasy

often nurtures the belief that difficulties and down times

are an indication of a lack of love rather than part of the

process. In actuality, true love thrives on the difficulties .

The foundation of such love is the assumption that we

want to grow and expand, to become more fully ourselves.

There is no change that does not bring with it a feeling of

181

,-\l.L A BOU T LO V E

challenge and loss. When we experience true love it may

fee l as though our lives are in danger; we may feel threat­

ened.

True love is different from the love that is rooted in

basic care, goodwill, and just plain old everyday attrac­

tion. We are all continually attracted to folks (we like their

style, the way they think, the way they look, etc.) whom

we know that, given a chance, we could love in a heart­

beat. In his insightful book Love and Awakening: Discov­

ering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship , John

Welwood makes a useful distinction between this type of

attraction, familiar to us all, which he calls a "heart con­

nection," and another type he calls a" soul connection."

Here is how he defines it: "A soul connection is a reso­

nance between two people who respond to the essential

beauty of each other's individual natures, behind their fa­

cades, and who connect on a deeper level. This kind of

mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent al­

chemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help

both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials.

While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love

just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further

dimension-seeing and loving them for who they could

be, and for who we could become under their influence."

Making a heart connection with someone is usually not a

difficult process.

Throughout our lives we meet lots of people with whom

I 8 2

ROMANCE: SWEET' LOVF

we feel that special click that could take us on the path

of love. But this click is not the same as a soul connection.

O ften, a deeper bonding with another person, a soul con­

nection, happens whether we will it to be so or not. In­

deed, sometimes we are drawn toward someone without

knowing why, even when we do not desire contact. Sev­

eral couples I talked wi th who have fou nd true love en­

joyed tell ing the story of how one of them did not fin d

the other at all appealing at firs t meeting even though they

fe lt mysteriously joined to that individual. In all cases

where individuals felt that they had known true love,

everyone testified that the bonding was not easy or simple.

To many folks this seems confusing precisely because our

fantasy of true love is that it will be just that-simple and

easy.

Usually we imagine that true love will be intensely plea­

surable and romantic, fu ll of love and light. In truth, true

love is all about work. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wisely

observed: "Like so much else, people have also misunder­

stood the place of love in life , they have made it into play

and pleasure because they thought that play and pleasure

was more blissful than work; but there is nothing happier

than work, and love, just because it is the extreme hap­

piness, can be nothing else but work . . . " The essence of

true love is mutual recognition-two individuals seeing

each other as they really are. We all know tha t the usual

approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self

I 8 3

.\ I I ,\ II () l ! T L () \' F

forward , or even at times a false se lf, one we believe will

be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When

our real self appea rs in its entirety, when the good behav­

ior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken

away, disa ppointment comes. All too often individuals

feel , after the fact-when fee lings are hurt and hearts are

broken-that it was a case of mistaken identity, that the

loved one is a stranger. They saw what they wanted to see

rather than what was really there.

True love is a different story. When it happens,

individuals usually feel in touch with each other's core

identity. Embarking on such a relationshi p is frightenin g

precisely because we feel there is no place to hide . We are

known. All the ecstacy that we feel emerges as th is love

nurtures us an d challenges us to grow and transform . De­

scribing true love, Eric Butterworth writes: "True love is

a peculiar kind of insight through which we see the whole­

ness which the person is- at the same t ime totally ac­

cepting the level on which he now expresses himself­

without any delusion that the potential is a present reality.

True love accepts the person who now is w ithout quali ­

fications, but with a sincere and unwavering commitment

to help him to achieve his goals of self-unfoldment­

which we may see better than he does ." Most of the time,

we think that love means just accepting the other person

as they are. Who among us has not learned the hard way

that we cannot change someone, mold them and make

I. 8 4

/( 0 ,\I c\ N C ,-: : s \V E ,'-r '(l V "

them into the ideal beloved V·ie might want them to be.

Yet when we commit to true love, we are comm itted to

being changed, to being acted upon by the beloved in a

way that enables us to be more fully self-actualized. This

commitment to change is chosen. It happens by mutual

agreement. Again and again in conversations the most

common vision of true love I have heard shared was one

that declared it to be "unconditional." True love is un­

conditional, but to truly flouri sh it requires an ongoing

commitment to constructive struggle and change .

The heartbeat of true love is the willingness to reflect

on one's actions, and to process and communicate this

reflection with the loved one. As Welwood puts it : "Two

beings who have a soul connection want to engage in a

full , free-ranging dia logue and commune with each other

as deeply as possible." Honesty and openness is always

the foundation of insightful dialogue. Most of us have not

been raised in homes where we have seen two deeply lov­

ing grown folks talking together. We do not see this on

television or at the movies. And how can any of us com­

municate with men who have been told all their lives that

they should not express what they feel. Men who want to

love and do not know how must first come to voice, must

learn to let their hearts speak- and then to speak truth .

Choosing to be fully honest, to reveal ourselves, is risky .

The experience of true love gives us the courage to risk.

As long we are afraid to risk we cannot know love .

18 5

A L I . A [\ 0 U'l 1 0 V E

Hence the truism: "Love is letting go of fe ar." Our hearts

connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will

go to our graves with no experience of true love . This is

in no way tragic, as most of us run the other way when

true love comes near. Since true love sheds light on those

aspects of ourselves we may wish to deny or hide, enabling

us to see ourselves clearly and without shame, it is not

surprising that so many individuals who say they want to

know love turn away when such love beckons.

NO MATTER HOW often we turn our minds and hearts

away-or how stubbornly we refuse to believe in its

magic-true love exists . Everyone wants it, even those

who claim to have given up hope. But not everyone is

ready. True love appears only when our hearts are ready.

A few years ago I was sick and had one of those cancer

scares where the doctor tells you if the tests are positive

you will not have long to live . Hearing his words I lay

there thinking, I could not possibly die because I am not

ready, I have not known true love. Right then I committed

myself to opening my heart; I was ready to receive such

love. And it came.

This relationship did not last forever, and that was dif­

ficult to face . All the romantic lore of our culture has told

us when we find true love with a partner it will continue.

Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain com­

mitted to being loving. Not everyone can bear the weight

186

ROMANCE: SWEET LOVE

of true love. Wounded hearts turn away from love because

they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to

sustain and nurture love. Many men, especially, often turn

away from true love and choose relationships in which

they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like

it but still receive love from someone else. Ultimately, they

choose power over love. To know and keep true love we

have to be willing to surrender the will to power.

When one knows a true love, the trans fo rmative fo rce

of that love lasts even when we no longer have the com­

pany of the person with whom we experienced profound

mutual care and growth. Thomas Merton writes: "We dis­

cover our true selves in love." Many of us are not ready

to accept and embrace our true selves, particularly when

living with integrity alienates us from our familiar worlds.

Often, when we undergo a process of self-recovery, for a

time we may find ourselves more alone. \XTriting about

choosing solitude over company that does not nurture

one's soul, Maya Angelou reminds us that " it is never

lonesome in Babylon." Fear of facing true love may ac­

tually lead some individuals to remain in situations of lack

and unfulfillment. There they are not alone, they are not

at risk .

To love fully and deeply puts us at risk. When we love

we are changed utterly. M erton asserts: "Love affects

more than our thinking and our behavior toward those

we love. It transforms our entire life . Genuine love is a

18 7

AI.L ;\J\OUT I.OVE

personal revolution. Love takes your ideas, your desires ' . , -~

and your actions and welds them together in one experi-

ence and one living real ity which is a new you ." We often

are in flight from the "new you." Richard Bach's autobi­

ographical love story Illusions describes both his flight

from love and his return. To return to love he had to be

willing to sacrif-ice and surrender, to let go of the fantasy

of being someone with no sustained emotional needs to

acknowledge his need to love and be loved. We sacrifice

our old selves in order to be changed by love and we sur­

render to the power of the new self.

Love within the context of romantic bonding offers us

the unique chance to be transformed in a welcoming cele­

bratory atmosphere . Without "falling in love," we can

recognize that moment of mysterious connection between

our sou I and that of another person as love's attempt to

call us back to our true selves. Intensely connecting with

another soul, we are made bold and courageous. Using

that fearless will to bond and connect as a catalyst for

choosing and committing ourselves to love, we are able to

love truly and deeply, to give and receive a love that lasts,

a love that is "stronger than death ."

188

E l even

LOSS:

LOVING INTO LIFE AND DEATH

You have to trust that every frie ndship has no end,

that a communion of saints exists among all those,

living and dead, who have truly loved God and one

another. You know from experience how real this is.

Those you have loved deeply and who have died live

on in you, not just as memories but as real presences .

- HENRI NOUWEN

Lov E MA KES us feel more alive. Living in a state

of lovelessness we feel we might as well be dead; every­

thing within us is silent and still. We are unmoved. "Soul

murder" is the term psychoanalysts use to describe this

state of living death. It echoes the biblical declaration that

" anyone who does not know love is still in death." Cul­

tures of domination court death. Hence the ongoing fas­

cination with violence, the fa lse insistence that it is natural

for the strong to prey upon the weak, for the more pow­

erful to prey upon the powerless . In our culture the wor­

ship of death is so intense it stands in the way of love. On

his deathbed Erich Fromm asked a beloved friend why we

prefer love of death to love of life, why "the human race

prefers necrophilia to biophilia ." Coming from Fromm

this question was merely rhetorical, as he had spent his

life explaining our cultural failure to fully embrace the

reality that love gives life meaning.

I 9 J

" I I ,\ II () li I L () V E I Unlike love, dcath will touch", all at >ome point," Our "

lives . We will witness the death of others or we will wit­

ness our own dying, even if it 's just in that brief instance

when life is fading away. Living with lovelessness is not a

probl em we openly and readily complain about. Yet the

real ity that we will all die generates tremendous concern,

fear , and worry. It may very well be that the worship of

death, indicated by the constant spectacles of dying we

watch on television screens dai ly, is one way our culture

tries to still that fear, to conquer it, to make us com­

fortable. Writing about the meaning o f death in contem­

porary culture Thomas Merton explains: "Psychoanalysis

has taught us something about the death wish that per­

vades the modern world. We discover our affluent society

to be profoundly addicted to the love of death .. . . In such

a society, though much may officially be said about hu­

man values, whenever there is, in fact, a choice between

the living and the dead, between men and money, or men

and power, or men and bombs, the choice will always be

for death, for death is the end or the goal of life ." Our

cultural obsession with death consumes energy that could

be given to the art of loving.

The worship of death is a central component of patri­

archal thinking, whether expressed by women or men. Vi ­

sionary theologians see the failure of religion as one

reason our culture remains death centered. In his work

Original Blessing, Matthew Fox explains: "Western civi-

I .9 2.

LOSS: LOVING INTO LIFE AND DEATH

lization has preferred love of death to love of life to the

very extent that its religious traditions have preferred re­

demption to creation, sin to ecstasy, and individual intro­

spection to cosmic awareness and appreciation." For the

most part, patriarchal perspectives have shaped religious

teaching and practice. Recently, there has been a turning

away from these teachings toward a creation-grounded

spirituality that is life-affirming. Fox calls this "the via

positiva ": "Without this solid grounding in creation 's

powers we become bored, violent people. We become nec­

rophiliacs in love with death and the powers and princi­

palities of death ." We move away from this worship of

death by challenging patriarchy, creating peace, working

for justice, and embracing a love ethic.

Ironically, the worship of death as a strategy for coping

with our underlying fe ar of death 's power does not truly

give us solace. It is deeply anxiety producing. The more

we watch spectacles of meaningless death, of random vio­

lence and cruelty, the more afraid we become in our daily

lives . We cannot embrace the stranger with love for we

fear the stranger. We believe the stranger is a messenger

of death who wants our life. This irrational fear is an

expression of madness if we think of madness as meaning

we are out of touch with reality. Even though we are more

likely to be hurt by someone we know than a stranger,

our fear is directed toward the unknown and the unfa­

miliar. That fear brings with it intense paranoia and a

193

ALL ABOUT LOVE

constant obsession with safety. The growing number of

gated communities in our nation is but one example of

the obsession with safety. With guards at the gate, indi­

viduals still have bars and elaborate internal security sys­

tems. Americans spend more than thirty billion dollars a

year on security. When I have stayed with friends in these

communities and inquired as to whether all the security is

in response to an actual danger I am told "not really,"

that it is the fear of threat rather than a real threat that

is the catalyst for an obsession with safety that borders on

madness .

Culturally we bear witness to this madness every day.

We can all tell endless stories of how it makes itself known

in everyday life . For example, an adult white male answers

the door when a young Asian male rings the bell. We live

in a culture where without responding to any gesture of

aggression or hostility on the part of the stranger, who is

simply lost and trying to find the correct address, the white

male shoots him, believing he is protecting his life and his

property. This is an everyday example of madness. The

person who is really the threat here is the home owner

who has been so well socialized by the thinking of white

supremacy, of capitalism, of patriarchy that he can no

longer respond rationally.

White supremacy has taught him that all people of color

are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has

taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be

I 9 4

LOSS: LO V ING INTO LIFE AND DEATH

protected . Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity

has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear

through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask ques­

tions before taking action . Mass media then brings us the

news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost

jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has hap­

pened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary

to uphold property va lues and white patriarchal honor.

Viewers are encouraged feel sympathy for the white male

home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mis­

take led to the violent death of an innocent young man

does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that

encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the

mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do

to "protect our property at all costs from any sense of

perceived threat. " This is what the worship of death looks

like .

All the worship of death we see on our television

screens, all the death we witness daily, does not prepare

us in any way to face dying with awareness, clarity, or

peace of mind. When worship of death is rooted in fear

it does not enable us to live fully or well. Merton con­

tends : "If we become obsessed with the idea of death hid­

ing and waiting fo r us in ambush, we are not making

death more real but life less rea l. O ur life is divided against

itself. It becomes a tu g of war between the love and the

fear of itself. Death then operates in the midst of life, not

I 9 5

ALL ABOUT LOVE

as the end of life, but rather, as the fear of life." To live

fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That

fear can only be addressed by the love of living. We have

a long history in this nation of believing that to be too

celebratory is dangerous, that being optimistic is fool­

hardy, hence our difficulty in celebrating life, in teaching

our children and ourselves how to love life.

Many of us come to love life only when faced with life­

threatening illness. Certainly, facing the possibil ity of my

own death gave me the courage to confront the lack of

love in my life. Much contemporary visionary work on

death and dying has highlighted learning how to love.

Loving makes it possible for us to change our worship of

death to a celebration of life. In an unsent letter written

to a true love in my life I wrote : "During the memorial

service for her sister my friend gave testimony in which

she declared 'death has left us loving her completely.' We

are so much more able to embrace the loss of intimate

loved ones and friends when we know that we have given

our all-when we have shared with them that mutual rec­

ognition and belonging in love which death can never

change or take away. Each day I am grateful for having

known a love that enables me to embrace death with no

fear of incompleteness or lack, with no sense of irredeem­

able regret . That is a gift you gave . I cherish it; nothing

changes its value. It remains precious." Loving does this.

I 9 6

LOSS: LOVINC INTO l.IFE AND DEATH

Love empowers us to live fully and die well. Death be­

comes, then, not an end to life but a part of living.

In her autobiography, The Wheel of Life, published

shortly after her death, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross tells the

story of her awakening to the rea lization that we can face

death without fear: "In these earliest days of what would

become known as the birth of thanatology-or the study of

death-my greatest teacher was a black cleaning woman. I

do not remember her name ... but what drew my atten­

tion to her was the effect she had on many of the most

seriously ill patients. Each time she left their rooms, there

was, I noticed, a tangible difference in their attitudes . I

wanted to know her secret. Desperately curious, I literally

spied on this woman who had never finished high school

but knew a big secret." The secret that this wise black

woman knew, which Kubler-Ross positively appropriated,

was that we must befriend death and let it be our guide

in life, meeting it unafraid. When the black cleaning lady

who had triumphed over many hardships in her own life,

who had lost loved ones to early deaths, entered the rooms

of the dying she brought with her a willingness to talk

openly about death without fear. This nameless angel gave

Kubler-Ross the most valuable lesson of her life, telling

her: "Death is not a stranger to me. He is an old, old

acquaintance." It takes courage to befriend death. We fin d

that courage in life through loving.

197

ALl. A B () \!T' I U V E

Our collective fear of death is a dis-ease of the heart.

Love is the only cure. Many peop le approach death with

despair because they realize they have not lived their lives

as they wanted to . They never found their "true selves"

or they never found the love their hearts longed to know.

Sometimes, facing death they offer themselves the love

they did not offer for most of their lives . They give them­

selves acceptance, the unconditional love that is the core

of self-love. In her foreword to Intimate Death, Marie De

Hennezel describes witnessing the way approaching death

can enable people to become more fully self-actualized.

She writes: "At the moment of utter solitude, when the

body breaks down on the edge of infinity , a separate time

begins to run that cannot be measured in any normal way.

In the course of several days something happens, with

the help of another presence that allows despa ir and pain

to declare themselves, the dying seize hold of their lives,

take possession of them, unlock their truth. They discover

the freedom of being true to themselves ." This deathbed

recognition of love's power is a moment of ecstasy. We

would be lucky if we felt its power all our days and not

just when those days are ending.

When we love every day we do not need the eminent

threat of sure death to be true to ourselves. Living with

awareness and clarity of mind and heart we are able to

embrace the realization of our dying in a manner that al-

19 8

LOS S : LOVING IN TO LIFE AND DEATH

lows us to live more fully because we know death is al­

ways with us . There is no one among us who is a stranger

to death. Our first home in the womb is also a grave where

we await the coming of life. Our first experience of living

is a moment of resurrection, a movement out of the shad­

ows and into the light . When we watch a child physically

coming out of the womb we know we are in the presence

of the miraculous .

Yet it does not take long for us to forget the magical

harmony of the transition from death into life. And death

soon becomes the passage we want to avoid. But it has

become harder for our nation to flee death . Even though,

on the average, we have longer life spans, death surrounds

us now more than ever, as so many life-threatening dis­

eases take the lives of loved ones, friends, and acquain­

tances, many of whom are young in years. This strong

presence of dying often cannot penetrate our cultural de­

nial that death is always among us, and people still refuse

to let an awareness of death guide them.

When I was a little girl, our mother talked with ease

about the possibility of death . Often, when we would put

off for tomorrow the things that could be done today, she

would remind us that" life is not promised." This was her

way of urging us to live life to the fullest-to live so that

we would be without regret. I am continually surprised

when friends, and strangers, act as though any talk of

I 9 9

ALL ABOUT LOVE

death is a sign of pessimism or morbidity. Death is among

us. To see it always and only as a negative subject is to

lose sight of its power to enhance every moment.

Luckily, those healers and comforters who work with

the dying show us how to face the reality of death, so that

talking about it is not taboo. Just as we are often unable

to speak about our need to love and be loved because we

fear our words would be interpreted as signs of weakness

or failure, so are we rarely able to share our thoughts

about death and dying. No wonder then that we are col­

lectively unable to confront the significance of grief. Just

as the dying are often carted off so that the process of

dying will be witnessed by only a select few, grieving in ­

dividuals are encouraged to let themselves go only in pri­

vate, in appropriate settings away from the rest of us.

Sustained grief is particularly disturbing in a culture that

offers a quick fix for any pain. Sometimes it amazes me

to know intuitively that the grieving are all around us yet

we do not see any overt signs of their anguished spirits.

We are taught to feel shame about grief that lingers. Like

a stain on our clothes, it marks us as flawed, imperfect.

To cling to grief, to desire its expression, is to be out of

sync with modern life , where the hip do not get bogged

down in mourning.

Love knows no shame. To be loving is to be open to

grief, to be touched by sorrow, even sorrow that is unend­

ing . The way we grieve is in fo rmed by whether we know

200

l.OSS : LOVING I NTO LIFE AND D EA TH

love. Since loving lets us let go of so much fear, it also

guides our grief. When we lose someone we love, we can

grieve without shame. Given that commitment is an im­

portant aspect of love, we who love know we must sustain

ties in life and death. Our mourning, our letting ourselves

grieve over the loss of loved ones is an expression of our

commitment, a form of communication and communion.

Knowing this and possessing the courage to claim our

grief as an expression of love's passion does not make the

process simple in a culture that would deny us the emo­

tional alchemy of grief. Much of our cultural suspicion of

intense grief is rooted in the fear that the unleashing of

such passion will overtake us and keep us from life . How­

ever, this fear is usually misguided. In its deepest sense,

grief is a burning of the heart, an intense heat that gives

us solace and release . When we deny the full expression

of our grief, it lays like a weight on our hearts, causing

emotional pain and physical ailments. Grief is most often

unrelenting when individuals are not reconciled to the re­

ality of loss.

Love invites us to grieve for the dead as ritual of mourn­

ing and as celebration. As we speak our hearts in mourn­

ing we share our intimate knowledge of the dead, of who

they were and how they lived. We honor their presence

by naming the legacies they leave us. We need not contain

grief when we use it as a means to intensify our love for

the dead and dying, for those who remain alive .

201

ALL ABOUT LOVE

Toward the end of her brilliant career, Kubler-Ross

was convinced that there really is no death, only a leav­

ing of the body to take another form. Like those who

believe in an afterlife, resurrection, or reincarnation,

death becomes, then, not an end, but a new beginning.

These insights, however enlightening, do not change the

fact that in death we surrender our embodied life on

earth . Love is the only force that allows us to hold one

another close beyond the grave. That is why knowing

how to love each other is also a way of knowing how to

die. When the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning declares

in her sonnet "I shall but love thee better after death,"

she attests to the importance of memory and commun­

ion with our dead.

When we allow our dead to be forgotten, we fall prey

to the notion that the end of embodied life corresponds

to the death of the spirit. In biblical scripture the divine

voice declares "I have set before you life and death,

therefore choose life ." Embracing the spirit that lives be­

yond the body is one way to choose life. We embrace

that spirit through rituals of remembering, through cer­

emonies wherein we invoke the spirit presence of our

dead, and through ordinary rituals in everyday life

where we keep the spirit of those we have lost close.

Sometimes we invoke the dead by allowing wisdom they

have shared to guide our present actions. Or we invoke

2 0 2

LOSS: LOVINC INTO LIFE AND DFATI-I

through reenacting one of their habits of being. And the

grief that may never leave us even as we do not aJlow it

to overwhelm us is also a way to give homage to our

dead, to hold them.

In a culture like ours, where few of us seek to know

perfect love, grief is often overshadowed by regret . We

regret things left unsaid, things left unreconciled. Now and

then when I find myself forgetting to celebrate life, un­

mindful of the way embracing death can heighten and en­

hance the way I interact with the world, I take time to

think about whether I would be at peace knowing that I

left someone without saying what's in my heart, that I left

with harsh words. I try daily to learn to leave folks as

though we might never be meeting again. This practice

makes us change how we talk and interact. It is a way to

live consciously.

The only way to live that life where, as Edith Piaf sings,

we "regret nothing" is by awakening to an awareness of

the value of right livelihood and right action. Understand­

ing that death is always with us can serve as the faithful

reminder that the time to do what we feel called to do is

always now and not in some distant and un imagined fu­

ture . Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches in Our

Appointment with Life that we find our true selves by

living fully in the present: "To return to the present is to

be in contact with life. Life can be found only in the pres-

2 0 3

~.

ALl. ABOUT lOVE ';'

J ent moment, because 'the past no longer is' and 'the future ,

has not yet come' .... Our appointment with life is in the

present moment. The place of our appointment is right

here, in this very place." Living in a culture that is always

encouraging us to plan for the future, it is no easy task to

develop the capacity "to be here now."

When we live fully in the present, when we acknowl­

edge that death is always with us and not just there at the

moment when we breathe our last breath, we are not dev­

astated by events over which we have no control-losing

a job, rejection by someone we hoped to connect with, the

loss of a longtime friend or companion. Thich Nhat Hanh

reminds us "everything we seek can only be found in the

present" that "to abandon the present in order to look for

things in the future is to throwaway the substance and

hold onto the shadow. " To be here now does not mean

that we do not make plans but that we learn to give the

making of future plans only a small amount of energy.

And once future plans are made, we release our attach­

ment to them. Sometimes it helps to write down our plans

for the future and put them away, out of sight and out of

mind.

Accepting death with love means we embrace the reality

of the unexpected, of experiences over which we have no

control. Love empowers us to surrender. We do not need

to have endless anxiety and worry about whether we will

20 4

LOSS: l.OVING I NTO LIFE AND DEATH

fulfill our goals or plans. Death is always there to remind

us that our plans are transitory. By learning to love, we

learn to accept change. Without change, we cannot grow.

Our will to grow in spirit and truth is how we stand be­

fore life and death, ready to choose life .

20 5

Twelve

HEALING:

REDEMPTIVE LOVE

We have been brought into the inner wine cellar and

sealed with His seal, which is to suffer out of love.

The ardor of this love greatly outweighs any suffering

we may undergo, for suffering comes to an end, but

love is forever.

- TESSA B IEL ECKI

LOVE HEALS . WHEN we ace wounded in the

place where we would know love, it is difficult to imagine

that love really has the power to change everything. No

matter what has happened in our past, when we open our

hearts to love we can live as if born again, not forgetting

the past but seeing it in a new way, letting it live inside

us in a new way. We go forward with the fresh insight

that the past can no longer hurt us. Or if our past was

one in which we were loved, we know that no matter the

occasional presence of suffering in our lives we will return

always to remembered calm and bliss. Mindful remem­

bering lets us put the broken bits and pieces of our hearts

together again. This is the way healing begins.

Contrary to what we may have been taught to think,

unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us but need

not scar us for life . It does mark us . What we allow the

mark of our suffering to become is in our own hands. In

20 9

.. \ L I .. \ II () l i T L Cl V F

his collection of essays The Fire Next Time, James Bald­

win writes about suffering in the healing process, stating;

"I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering- but

people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never

discover who they are. " Grc)\ving up is, at heart, the pro­

cess of learning to take responsibility for whatever hap­

pens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love

that heals.

The healing power of mind and heart is always present

because we have the capacity to renew our spirits end­

lessly, to restore the soul. I am always particularly grateful

to meet people who do not feel their childhoods were

marked by unnecessary pain and suffering, by loveless­

ness. Thei r presence reminds me that we do not need to

undergo anything dreadfu l to feel deeply, that we never

need suffering to be imposed upon us by acts of violence

and abuse. At times we vvi!! all be confronted with suffer­

ing, an unexpected illness, a loss . That pain will come

whether we choose it or not and not one of us can escape

it. The presence of pain in our lives is not an indicator of

dysfunction. Not all families are dysfunctional. And while

it has been crucial for collective self-recovery that we have

exposed and continue to expose dysfunction, it is equally

important to revel in and celebrate its absence .

Unless we can all imagine a world in which the family

is not dysfunctional but is instead a place where love

abounds , we doom family life to be always and only a site

2 I 0

HEALI NG: REDEMPTIVE LOVE

of woundedness. In functional families individuals face

conflict, contradictions, times of unhappiness, and suffer­

ing just like dysfunctional families do; the difference lies

in how these issues are confronted and resolved, in how

everyone copes in moments of crisis. Healthy families

resolve conflict without coercion, shaming, or violence.

When we collectively move our culture in the direction of

love, we may see these loving families represented more

in the mass media. They will become more visible in all

walks of daily life. Hopefully, we will then listen to these

stories with the same intensity that we have when we listen

to narratives of violent pain and abuse. When this hap­

pens, the visible happiness of functional families will be­

come part of our collective consciousness .

In The Family: A Revolutionary Way of Self-Discovery,

John Bradshaw offers this definition: "A functional healthy

family is one in which all the members are fully functional

and all the relationships between the members are fully

functional. As human beings, all family members have

available to them the use of all their human power. They

use these powers to cooperate, individuate and to get their

collective and individual needs met. A functional family is

the healthy soil out of which individuals can become ma­

ture human beings." In the functional family self-esteem

is learned and there is a balance between autonomy and

dependency.

Long before the terms "functional" and "dysfunc-

2 I I

ALL ABOUT LOVE

tional" were used to identify types of fami lies, those of us

who were wounded in childhood knew it because we were

in pain. And that pain did not go away even when we left

home. More than our pain, our self-destructive, self­

betraying behavior trapped us in the traumas of child­

hood. We were unable to find solace or release . We could

not choose healing because we were not sure we could

ever mend, that the broken bits and pieces could ever be

put together again. We comforted ourselves by acting out.

But this comfort did not last . It was usually followed by

depression and overwhelming grief. We longed to be res­

cued because we did not know how to save ourselves.

More often than not we became addicted to living dan­

gerously. Clinging to this addiction made it impossible for

us to be well in our souls . As with all other addiction,

letting go and choosing wellness was our only way of res­

cue and recovery.

In many ways I have acted out throughout much of my

life. When I began to walk on the path of love, I was awed

by how quickly previous dysfunctions were changed. In

the church of my girlhood we were always told no one

could give an individual salvation, that we had to choose

it for ourselves. We had to want to be saved. In Toni Cade

Bambara's novel The Salt Eaters, wise older women who

are healers are called in to assist the young woman who

has attempted suicide, and they tell her: "Just so's you're

sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, 'cause wholeness

2 I 2

H EA LI N C: RFDE M PTIVE LOVE

is no trifl ing matter-a lot of weight when you are well."

Making the primal choice to be saved does not mean we

do not need support and help with problems and difficul­

ties. It is simply that the initial gesture of taking respon­

sibility for our well -being, wherein we confess to our

brokenness, our woundedness, and open ourselves to sal­

vation, must be made by the individual. This act of open­

ing the heart enables us to receive the healing offered us

by those who care.

ALTHOUGH WE ALL want to know love, we talk about

the search for true love as though it is always and only a

solitary quest. I am disturbed by the weighty emphasis on

self in so much New Age writing on the topic, and in our

culture as a whole. When I would talk about my yearning

fo r a loving partner, people told me over and over that I

did not need anyone else . They would say I did not need

a companion and/or a circle of loved ones to feel com­

plete, tha t I should be complete inside myself. While it is

definitely true that inner contentedness and a sense of ful­

fillment can be there whether or not we commune in love

with others, it is equally meaningful to give voice to that

longing for communion. Life without communion in love

with others would be less fulfill ing no matter the extent

of one's self-love.

All over the world people live in intimate daily contact

with one another. They wash together, eat and sleep to-

2 I 3

A LL A B OUT LOVE

gether, face challenges together, share joy and sorrow. The

rugged indiv idual who relies on no one else is a figure who

can only exist in a culture of domination where a privi­

leged few use more of the world's resources than the many

who must daily do without. Worship of individualism has

in part led us to the unhealthy culture of narcissism that

is so all pervasive in our society.

Western travelers journey to the poorest countries and

are astounded by the level of communion between people

who, though not materially rich, have full hearts. It is no

accident that so many of the spiritual teachers we gravitate

to in our affluent society, which is driven by the ethos of

rugged individualism, come from cultures that value in­

terdependency and working fo r a collective good over in­

dependence and individual gain.

While terms like "codependency," which came out of

programs for individual self-recovery, rightly show the

ways in which excessive dependency can be unhealthy,

especially when it is marked by the support of addictive

behavior, we still need to talk about healthy interdepen­

dency . No organization dedicated to healing demonstrates

this principle more than Alcoholics Anonymous. The mil­

lions of people who attend AA meetings seek a place of

recovery and find that the affirming community that sur­

rounds them creates an environment of healing. This com­

munity offers to individuals, some for the first time ever

in their lives, a taste of that acceptance, care, knowledge,

2 I 4

H F ALI N C: I( E Il L ,\1 I' T I V }-: L () V L

and responsibility that is love in action . Ra rely, if ever,

are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of com­

mUllion .

Most of us find th at space of healing communion with

like-minded souls. Other individuals recover themselves in

their communion with divine spirit . Saint Teresa of Avila

found , in her union with the divine, recognition, comfort,

and solace. She wrote: "There is no need to go to heaven

in order to speak w ith one's Eterna l Father or find delight

in Him. Nor is there any need to shout. H owever softly

we speak, H e is near enough to hear us .. .. All one need

do is go into solitude and look at Him 'vvithin oneself, and

not tu rn away from so good a G uest but w ith great hu­

mility speak to Him . .. " Prayer provides a space where

talking cures. It is no doubt a sign of the sp iritual crisis

of our times that books are written to provide proof that

p rayer is soothing for the so u!. AI! religious traditions ac­

knowledge that there is comfort in reaching for the sacred

through words, whether traditional liturgy, prayer, or

chants . I pray daily as a gesture o f spi ritual vigilance .

Prayer is an exercise that strengthens the sou l' s power.

Reaching for the divine always reminds me of the limita­

tions of human thought and will. Stretching, reaching to­

ward that which is limitless and without boundaries is an

exercise that strengthens my faith and em powers my soul.

Prayer allows each person a private place of confession.

T here is truth in the axiom "confession is good for the

2 I 5

All AtlOUT LO VI-:

soul." It allows us to bear witness to our own trespasses,

to those ways we miss the mark (a defin ition of the mean­

ing of sinfulness) . It is only as we recognize and confront

the circumstances of our spiritua l forgetfulness that we

assume accountability . In their work The Raft Is No t the

Shore, Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh stress that

" the bridge of illusion must be destroyed before a real

bridge can be constructed ." In communion with divine

spirit we can claim the space of accountability and renew

our commitment to that transformation of spirit that

opens the heart and prepares us to love .

After we have made the choice to be healed in love, faith

that transformation will come gives us the peace of mind

and heart that is necessa ry when the soul seeks revolution.

It is difficult to wait. No doubt that is why biblical scrip­

tures urge the seeker to learn how to wait, for waiting

renews our strength. When we surrender to the "wait" we

allow changes to emerge within us without anticipation

or struggle. When we do this we are -stepping out, on faith .

In Buddhist terms this practice of surrender, of letting go,

makes it possible for us to enter a space of compassion

where we can feel sympathy for ourselves and others . That

compassion awakens us to the healing power of service.

Love in action is always about service, what we do to

enhance spiritual growth. A focus on individual reflection,

contemplation, and therapeutic dialogue is vita l to heal­

ing. But it is not the only way to recover ourselves. Serv ing

2 I 6

HEALI NC : R F.DEMPT IVF 1.0VF.

others is as fruitful a path to the heart as any other thera­

peutic practice. To truly serve, we must always empty the

ego so that space can exist for us to recognize the needs

of others and be capable of fulfilling them. The greater

our compassion the more aware we are of ways to extend

ourselves to others that make healing possible .

To know compassion fully is to engage in a process of

forgivenes s and recognition that enables us to release all

the baggage we carry that serves as a barrier to healing.

Compassion opens the way fo r individuals to feel empathy

for others wi thout judgment. Judging others increases our

alienation. When we judge we are less able to forgive . The

absence of forgiveness keeps us mired in shame. Often,

our spirits have been broken again and again through ritu­

als of disregard in which we were shamed by others or

shamed ourselves. Shame breaks and weakens us, keeping

us away from the wholeness healing offers. When we prac­

tice forgiveness, we let go of shame. Embedded in our

shame is always a sense of being unworthy. It separates.

Compassion and forgiveness reconnect us.

Forgiveness not only enables us to overcome estrange­

ment, it intensifies our capacity for affirming one another.

Without conscious forgi veness there can be no genuine

reconciliation . Making amends both to ourselves and to

others is the gift compassion and forgiveness offers us. It

is a process of emptying out wherein we let go all the

waste so that there is a clear place within where we can

21 7

.-\ I. 1 ,\ 1\ 0 l !J I. () V F.

see the other as oursel f. Casarjian expla ins in Forgiueness:

"Even small acts of forgiveness always have significant

ramifications at a personal level. Even sma ll acts of for­

giveness contribute to one's sense of trust in oneself and

the potential of others; they contribute to a human spirit

that is fundamentally hopeful a nd optimistic rather than

pessimistic or defeated; they contribute to knowing oneself

and others as potentially powerful people who can choose

to lovingly create, versus seeing humans as basically self­

ish , destructive and sinners ."

When we have clarity of mind and heart we are able to

know delight, to engage the sensual world around us with

a pleasure that is immediate and profound. In his essay

"Down at the Cross," James Baldwin declares: "To be

sensual .. . is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of

life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the

effort of loving to the breaking of bread." Poet Adrienne

Rich ca utions against the loss of the sensual in What Is

Found There? Notebook s on Poetry and Politics: "Sensual

vitality is essential to the struggle fo r life . It's as simple­

and as threatened- as that." Estra ngement from the rea lm

o f th e senses is a direct product of overindulgence, of ac­

quiring too much. This is why living simply is a crucial

part of healing. As we begin to simplify, to let the clutter

go, whether it is the clutter of desire or the actual material

clutter and incessant busyness that fills every space, we

recover our capacity to be sensual. When the as leep body,

2. 1 8

HI: AIIN(;: REDEMPTIVE LOVE

numb and deadened to the world of the senses, awakens,

it is a resurrection that reveals to us that love is stronger

than death.

L 0 V ERE DEE MS. DES PIT E all the lovelessness that

surrounds us, nothing has been able to block our longing

for love, the intensity of our yearning. The understanding

that love redeems appears to be a resilient aspect of the

heart's knowledge. The healing power of redemptive love

lures us and calls us toward the possibility of healing. We

cannot account for the presence of the heart's knowledge.

Like all great mysteries, we are all mysteriously called to

love no matter the conditions of our lives, the degree of

our depravity or despair. The persistence of th is call gives

us reason to hope. Without hope, we cannot return to

love. Breaking our sense of isolation and opening up the

window of opportunity, hope provides us with a reason

to go forward. It is a practice of positive thinking. Being

positive, living in a permanent state of hopefulness, renews

the spirit. Renewing our faith in love's promise, hope is

our covenant.

I began thinking and writing about love when I heard

cynicism instead of hope in the voices of young and old.

Cynicism is the greatest barrier to love. It is rooted in

doubt and despair. Fear intensifies our doubt. It paralyzes.

Faith and hope allow us to let fe ar go. Fear stands in the

way of love. When we take to heart the biblical insistence

2 I 9

ALL AllOUT LOVE

that "there is no fear in love," we understand the necessity

of choosing courageous thought and action. This scripture

encourages us to find comfort in knowing that "perfect

love casts our fear." This is our reminder that even if fear

exists it can be released by the experience of perfect love.

The alchemy of perfect love is such that it offers to us all

a love that is able to vanquish fear. That which is rendered

separate or strange through fear is made whole through

perfect love. It is this perfect love that is redemptive- that

can, like the intense heat of alchemical fire, burn away

impurities and leave the soul free .

Significantly, we are told in biblical scripture that it is

crucial that love casts out fear "because fear hath tor­

ment." These words speak directly to the presence of an­

guish in our lives when we are driven by fear. The practice

of loving is the healing force that brings sustained peace.

It is the practice of love that transforms. As one gives and

receives love, fear is let go. As we live the understanding

that "there is no fear in love" our anguish diminishes and

we garner the strength to enter more deeply into love's

paradise. When we are able to accept that giving ourselves

over to love completely restores the soul, we are made

perfect in love.

The transformative power of love is not fully embraced

in our society because we often wrongly believe that tor­

ment and anguish are our "natural" condition. This as­

sumption seems to be affirmed by the ongoing tragedy that

220

HEA L I NG : REDEMPTIVE LOVE

prevails in modern society. In a world anguished by ram­

pant destruction, fear prevails. When we love, we no

longer allow our hearts to be held captive by fear. The

desire to be powerful is rooted in the intensity of fear.

Power gives us the illusion of having triumphed over fear,

over our need for love.

To return to love, to know perfect love, we surrender

the will to power. It is this revelation that makes the scrip­

tures on perfect love so prophetic and revolutionary for

our times. We cannot know love if we remain unable to

surrender our attachment to power, if any feeling of vul­

nerability strikes terror in our hearts. Lovelessness tor­

ments.

As our cultura l awareness of the ways we are seduced

away from love, away from the knowledge that love heals

gains recognition, our anguish intensifies . But so does our

yearning. The space of our lack is also the space of pos­

sibility. As we yearn, we make ourselves ready to receive

the love that is coming to us, as gift, as promise, as earthly

paradise.

221

Thirteen

DESTINY :

WHEN ANGELS SPEAK OF LOVE

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning

of life by ourselves alone-we fin d it with another.

- TH OMA S M ERT ON

BELIEVING IN DIVINE love comfoctcd me as a

child when I felt overwhelmed by loneliness and sorrow.

The solace of knowing I could speak my heart to God and

the angels made me feel less alone. They were there with

me during anguished and terrifying dark nights of the soul

when no one unders tood. They were there with me, lis­

tening to my tears and my heartache . I could not see them

but I knew they were there. I heard them whispering to

me about love's promise, letting me know all would be

well with my soul, speaking to my heart in a divinely

sweet secret language.

Angels bear witness . They are the guardian spirits who

watch, protect, and guide us throughout our lives. Some­

times they take a human form. At other times they are

pure spirit-unseen, unimaginable, just forever present.

One sign that a religious awakening is taking place in our

culture is our obsession with angels. Images of angels are

225

A I l. .\ II (1 U T l. (1 \ ' F

everywhere; they are characters in movies , Images 111

books, on notecards and calendars, on curtains and wal l­

paper. Angels represent for us a vision of innocence, of

beings not burde ned by guilt or shame. Whether we imag­

ine them the dark round -faced forms of Copti c tradition

or the fair, winged cherubs that we usually see, they are

messengers of the divine. We see them as always bringing

news that w ill give our hearts ease.

Our cultural passion for the ange lic expresses our long­

ing to be in paradise, to return on ea rth to a time of

connectedness and goodwill, to a time when we were

heart-whole. Even though the images of angels we most

commonly see are childlike fig ures aglow with rapture and

unspeakable delight, as messengers they carry the weight

of our burdens, our sorrows, and our joys. In represen­

tations they are most often given a childl ike visage to re­

mind us that enlightenment comes only as we return to a

childlike state and are born again.

We see angels as light-hearted creatures in swift motion

reaching for the heavens. Their being and the weight of

their knowledge is never static. Always changing, they see

through our false selves . Possessing psychic insight, intui­

tion, and the wisdom of the heart they stand for the prom­

ise of life fulfilled through the union of knowledge and

responsibility . As guard ians of the soul's well-being, they

care for us and with us. Our turning toward the an-

226

DESTINY: WHEN A NGELS S PEAK OF LOVE

gelic is evocative of our yearning to embrace spiritual

growth. It reveals our collective desire to return to love.

THE FI R 5 T 5 TOR I E 5 of angels I heard as a child were

told at church. From religious teachings I learned that as

messengers of the divine, angels were wise counselors.

They were able to assist us in our spiritual growth. Un­

conditional lovers of the human spirit, they were there to

help us face reality without fear. The story of an angel

that remained most vivid to me throughout my childhood

and on into my adult life was the narrative of Jacob's

confrontation with the angel on his way home. Jacob was

not just any old biblical hero, he was a man capable of

intense passionate love. Coming out of the wilderness,

where as a young man he fled from fami lial strife, Jacob

enters the land where his relatives live. He meets there his

soul mate, Rachel. Even though he swiftly acknowledges

his love for her, they can unite only after much hard work,

struggle, and suffering.

We are told Jacob served seven years for Rachel, but it

seemed to him only a few days "so great was the love he

had to her." Interpreting th is story in The Man Who

Wrestled with God, John Sanford comments: "The fact

that Jacob could fall in love at all shows that a certain

amount of psychological growth had taken place in him

during his journey through the wilderness. So far the only

227

ALL ABOUT LOVE

woman in his life had been his mother. As long as a man

remains in a state of psychological development in which

his mother is the most important woman to him, he can­

not mature as a man. A man's eros, his capacity for love

and relatedness, must be freed from attachment to the

mother, and able to reach out to a woman who is his

contemporary; otherwise he remains a demanding, de­

pendent, childish person." Here Sanford is speaking about

negative dependency, which is not the same as healthy

attachment. Men who are positively attached to their

mothers are able to balance that bond, negotiating de­

pendency and autonomy, and can extend it to affectional

bonds with other women. In fact, most women know that

a man who genuinely loves his mother is likely to be a

better friend , partner, or mate than a man who has always

been overly dependent on his mother, expecting her to

unconditionally meet all his needs. Since genuine love re­

quires a recognition of the autonomy of ourselves and the

other person, a man who has loved in childhood has al­

ready learned healthy practices of individuation. As Jacob

labors for Rachel, making wrong choices and difficult de­

cisions, he grows and matures. By the time they wed he is

able to be a loving partner.

Meeting his soul mate does not mean Jacob 's journey

toward self-actualization and wholeness ends. When he

receives the message from God that he should return to

the home he once ran from, he must once again journey

228

DESTINY : WHEN ANCELS SPEAK 0 L 0 V E

through the wilderness. Aga in and again wise spiritual

teachers share with us the understanding that the journey

toward self-actualization and spiritual growth is an ar­

duous one, full of challenges. Usually it is downright dif­

ficult. Many of us believe our difficulties will end when

we find a soul mate. Love does not lead to an end to

difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our

difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. Having

worked and waited for love, Jacob becomes psychologi­

cally strong. He calls upon that strength when he must

once again enter the wilderness to journey home.

A divine voice brings Jacob the message that he must

return to the land of his ancestors . As a man who bas

learned to love, Jacob intuitively asks for guidance. He

listens to his heart speak. When the answer comes, he acts.

Since he left home in the first place because he had con­

flicts with his brother Esau, the prospect of returning is

frightening. But he must come face to face with his past

and seek reconciliation if he is to know inner peace and

become fully mature. On the long journey home Jacob

continually engages in conversations with God. He prays.

He meditates . Seeking solace in solitude he goes in the

dead of the night and walks by a stream. There, a being

he does not fully recognize wrestles with him. Unbe­

knownst to him, Jacob has been given the gift of meeting

an angel face to face .

Confronting his fears, his demons, his shadow self, Ja-

229

ALl. ABOUT LOVE

cob surrenders the longing for safety. Psychologically he

enters a primal night and returns to a psychic space where

he is not yet fully awake. It is as though he becomes a

child in the womb again striving to be reborn. The angel

is not an adversary seeking to take his life, but rather

comes as a witness enabling him to receive the insight that

there is joy in struggle. His fear is replaced by a sense of

calm. In Soul Food: Stories to Nourish the Spirit and the

Heart, Jack Kornfield and Christina Feldman write that

we too can choose serenity in the midst of struggle: "In

that calmness we begin to understand that peace is not the

opposite of challenge and hardship. We understand that

the presence of light is not a result of darkness ending.

Peace is found not in the absence of challenge but in our

own capacity to be with hardship without judgment,

prejudice, and resistance. We discover that we have the

energy and the faith to heal ourselves, and the world,

through an openheartedness in this movement." As Jacob

embraces his adversary, he moves through the darkness

into the light.

Rather than letting the angel go when light comes, Ja­

cob demands and is given a blessing. Significantly, he can­

not receive the blessing without first letting fear go and

opening his heart to be touched by grace. Sanford writes:

"Jacob refused to part with his experience until he knew

its meaning, and this marked him as a man of spiritual

greatness. Everyone who wrestles with his spiritual and

2. 3 0

DESTINY: WHEN ANCELS SPEAK OF LOVE

psychological experience, and, no matter how dark or

frightening it is, refuses to let it go unti l he discovers its

meaning, is having something of the Jacob experience.

Such a person can come through his dark struggle to the

other side reborn, but one who retreats or runs from his

encounter with spiritual reality cannot be transformed."

It should reassure us that the blessing the angel gives to

Jacob comes in the form of a wound.

Woundedness is not a cause for shame, it is necessary

for spiritual growth and awakening. I can remember how

strange it seemed to me as a child when I read this story

over and over in my big book of Bible stories for children,

that to be wounded could be a blessing. To my child's

mind woundedness was always negative. Being unable to

protect oneself from hurts inflicted by others was a source

of shame. In Coming Out of Shame, Gershen Kaufman

and Lev Raphael contend: "Shame is the most disturbing

emotion we ever experience directly about ourselves, for

in the moment of shame we feel deeply divided from our­

selves. Shame is like a wound made by an unseen hand,

in response to defeat, failure or rejection. At the same mo­

ment that we feel most disconnected, we long to embrace

ourselves once more, to fee l reunited. Shame divides us

from ourselves, just as it divides us from others, and be­

cause we still yearn for reunion, shame is deeply disturb­

ing." Shame about woundness keeps many people from

seeking healing. They would rather deny or repress the

23 1

A I I ,\ J>, () u 'r I. 0 V F

reality of hurt. In our culture we hear a lot about guilt

but not enough about the politics of shame. As long as we

feel shame, we can never believe o urselves worthy of love.

Shame about being hurt often has its origin in child­

hood . And it is then that many of us first learn that it is

a virtue to be silent about pain . [n Banished Knowledge:

Facing Childhood Injuries, psychoanalyst Alice M iller

states : "Not to take one's own suffering seriously, to make

light of it or even to laugh at it, is consi dered good man­

ners in our culture . This attitude is even called a virtue

and many people (at one time including myself) are proud

of their lack of sensitivity toward their own fate and above

all toward their own childhood." As more people have

found the courage to break through shame and speak

about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected

to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of

woundedness is mocked . The belittling of anyone's

attempt to name a context within which they were

wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is

psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts.

All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being

within a healing context realize that it is important to that

process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or a

location from which to simply blame others . We need to

speak our shame and our pain courageously in order to

recover. Addressing woundedness is not about blaming

others; however, it does allow individuals who have been ,

23 2

I) F sri NY: \V 1 1 I : N .\ N (, I . ISS I' I i\" 0 I L 0 V F.

and are, hurt to insist on accountab ility and responsibility

both from themselves and from those who were the agents

of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Con­

structive confrontation aids our healing.

The story of Jacob's confrontation with the angel is a

narrati ve of healing precisely because it shows he is in­

nocent. T here is nothing he has done to anger the angel.

T he adversarial confl ict is not of his making. He is not

accountable. And he is not to blame for his wo und . How­

ever, healing happens when he is able to embrace the

wound as a blessing and assume responsibility for his ac­

tions.

We are all wounded at times . A great many of us remain

wounded in the place where we would know love . We

carry that wound fro m childhood into adu lthood and on

into old age. The story of Jacob reminds us that embracing

our wound is the way to heal. H e accepts his vulnerability.

Kornfie ld and Feldman remind us that the moment in

which we are touched by pain and " the unpredictability

of life 's changes" is the moment in which we can find

salvation: "As we turn toward the specific shadows in our

own lives with an open heart and a clear and focused

mind, we cease res isting and begin to understand and to

heal. In order to do this, we must learn to feel deeply, no t

so much opening our eyes as opening the inner sense of

the mind and the heart. " When Jacob wrestles with the

angel, he fee ls a heightened sense of awareness . Facing this

2 3 3

ALl. AHOUT l.UVF

struggle gives him the courage to persevere in his journey

back to face conflicts and reconcile them rather than live

in alienation and estrangement.

As a nation, we need to gather our collective courage

and face that our society's lovelessness is a wound. As we

allow ourselves to acknowledge the pain of this wound

when it pierces our flesh and we feel in the depths of our

soul a profound anguish of spirit, we come face to face

with the possibility of conversion, of having a change of

heart. In this way, recognition of the wound is a blessing

because we are able to tend it, to care for the soul in ways

that make us ready to receive the love that is promised.

Angels bring to us the knowledge of how we must jour­

ney on the path to love and well-being. Coming to us in

both human form and as pure spirit they guide, instruct,

and protect. Alice Miller chose to call the angelic force in

an individual's life the "enlightened witness." To her, this

was, in particular, any individual who offered hope, love,

and guidance to a wounded child in any dysfunctional

setting. Most folks who come from a conflict-ridden

family or a setting that was lacking in love remember the

individuals who offered sympathy, understanding, and at

times a way out. Speaking of her mother's "miserable

childhood" Hillary Clinton remembers that "others out­

side the family circle stepped in, and their help made all

the difference." From childhood on, I found many of my

angels in favorite authors, writers who created books that

234

DEST[NY: W HE N ANGELS SPEAK OF LOVE

enabled me to understand life with greater complexity.

These works opened my heart to compassion forgO , lveness, and understanding. In her memoir Are You Somebody?,

Irish journalist N uala O'Faolain writes about the life­

saving nature of books, declaring, "If there was nothing

else, reading would- obviously-be worth living for."

German poet Rainer Maria Rilke's autobiographical

writing transformed my sense of self as a teenager. At a

time when I felt like an outsider, unworthy and unwanted,

his work gave me a way to see being an outsider as a place

of creativity and possibility. In the concluding chapter of

the memoir of my girlhood, Bone Black, I write : "Rilke

gives meaning to the wilderness of spirit I am living in.

His book is a world I enter and find myself. He tells me

that everything terrible is really something helpless that

wants help from us . I read Letters to a Young Poet over

and over. I am drowning and it is the raft that takes me

safely to the shore." I received his book as a gift at a

spiritual retreat. There I met a priest who worked as a

chaplain at a nearby college . He was one of the featured

speakers. Intuiting the depths of my despair, he offered

me solace. I was in my teens and had begun to feel as

though I could not go on living. Suicidal longings domi­

nated my waking thoughts and my nightmares . I believed

death would release me from the overwhelming sadness

that weighed me down.

Listening to spiritual testimony at the retreat I felt even

2 3 5

ALL ,\IlOUT LOVE

more sorrowful. I could not understand how everyone else

could be lifted by divine spirit when I felt more and more

alone, as though I was fa lling into an abyss without hope

of rescue. I never asked Father B. what he saw when he

looked at me or why I was chosen as one of the individu­

als he singled out for spiritual counsel ing. He touched my

soul, offering to me (and to everyone he connected with)

a loving spirit . In his presence I felt chosen, beloved. Like

many earthly angels who visit us and touch our lives with

their vis ionary power and healing wisdom, I never en­

countered him again. But I have never forgotten his pres­

ence, the gifts he offered to me-gifts of love and

compassion freely given.

The presence of angels, of angelic spirits, reminds us

that there is a realm of mystery that cannot be explained

by human intellect or will. We all experience this mystery

in our daily lives in some ways, however small, whether

we see ourselves as " spiritual" or not . We find ourselves

in the right place at the right time, ready and able to re­

ceive blessings without knowing just how we got there.

Often we look at events retrospectively and can trace a

pattern, one that allows us to intuitively recognize the

presence of an unseen spirit guiding and directing our

path.

W hen I was a young girl , I would lie in my attic bed

and talk endlessly with divine spirit about the nature of

love. T hen, I did not imagine I would ever have the cour-

2 3 6

DEST I NY: WHEN ANGELS SPEAK OF LOVE

age to speak about love without the solitary covering of

secrecy or night. Like Jacob, wandering alone by the

stream, in the stillness of my pitch-dark room I grappled

with the metaphysics of love, seeking to understand love's

mystery. That grappling continued until my awareness in­

tensified and a new vision of love came to me. Now I

recognize that I was engaged from then until now in a

disciplined spiritual practice-opening the heart. It led me

to become a devout seeker on love's path-to talk with

angels face to face unafraid.

Understanding all the ways fear stands in the way of

our knowing love challenges us. Fearful that believing in

love's truths and letting them guide our lives will lead to

further betrayal, we hold back from love when our hearts

are full of longing. Being loving does not mean we will

not be betrayed. Love helps us face betrayal without losing

heart. And it renews our spirit so we can love again. No

matter how hard or terrible our lot in life, to choose

against lovelessness- to choose love- we can listen to the

voices of hope that speak to us, that speak to our hearts­

the voices of angels. When angels speak of love they tell

us it is only by loving that we enter an earthly paradise.

They tell us paradise is our home and love our true des­

tiny.

237

QUOTATIONS ARE REPRINTED FROM

Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart, Shambhala Publications, 1994

Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of Love, Random House, 1994

Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses, Simon & Schuster, 1986

John Welwood, Love and Awakening, HarperCollins, 1996

M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled, Simon & Schuster, 1978

Tessa Bielecki, Holy Daring, Element Inc., 1994

Marianne Williamson, The Healing of America, Simon & Schuster, 1977

Sharon Salzberg, A Heart As Wide As the World, Shambhala Publications, 1997

Parker Palmer, The Active Life, HarperCollins, 1990

Henri Nouwen, The In ner Voice of Love, Doubleday, 1996

Thomas Merton, Love and Liking, Commonweal Publishing, 1997

2 3 8

ACCLAIMED VISIONARY, cultural critic and feminist theorist,

bell hooks was born and raised in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. She re­

ceived her B.A. from Stanford University, where, at the age of twenty,

she published her first book: the ground breaking feminist treatise

Ain't J a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Bell received her M.A.

from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D. from the University

of California at Santa Cruz. Previously a professor in the English de­

partments at Yale University and Oberlin College, hooks is now a dis­

tinguished Professor of English at the City University of New York.

Bell is hailed as one of the foremost intellectual voices on race in

America. Puhlishers Weelcly rated bell's Ain't I a Woman one of the

twenty most influential women's books of the last twenty years. At­

lantic Monthly named bell one of the New Intellectuals who are

"bringing moral imagination and critical intelligence to bear on the

defining!y Ame rican matter of race ." Utne Reader named bell one of

the" 1 00 Visionaries Who Could Change Your Life."

A prolific writer, she is the author of more than seventeen books

including Rememhered Rapture: The Writer at Work; Wounds of

Passion: A Writing Life; Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood; Killing

Rage: Eliding Racism; Art 011 My Mind: Visua l Politics; Outlaw

Culture: Resisting Representations; and Bread: Insurgent Blaclc In­

tellectual Life, co-authored with Cornel West. Her next book, Sal­

uation: Black Peopie alld Loue, will be published by William

Morrow in February 2001 .

239